Mariah Carey’s Relationship History: Husbands & Boyfriends

On March 27, 1969, Mariah Carey was born in the US state of New York.

Because her husband was Black, Patricia, her mother, an opera singer, was rejected by her family for marrying Mariah’s father, an aeronautical engineer.

While practicing at home for a role with the New York City Opera Rigoletto, Patricia first became aware of Mariah’s talent. Her two-year-old daughter began to join in on the singing.

 

Mariah’s renowned five-octave vocal range was developed with her guidance as her singing instructor.

Carey was working as a demo vocalist by the time she was in high school. After that, she relocated to New York and found work backing up Brenda K. Starr.

Tommy Mottola

At a gathering with Starr, Carey, who was only 19 at the time, gave her demo tape to Tommy Mottola, the head of Columbia Records at the time.

He requested the driver to turn around as soon as he finished listening to the cassette on the way home, but Carey had already departed.

After a bidding war, he finally located Carey and signed her.

When her first album, Mariah Carey, was released on June 12, 1990, it spent 11 weeks at the top of the US charts.

It gave rise to Vision of Love, her debut single and the Grammy Award winner for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She also won the Grammy for Best New Artist.

Mottola, who was married with two children at the time he met Carey, divorced his wife and he and Carey began dating, despite a 21-year age difference.

In 1993, they were married in an extravagant ceremony in New York, where Carey, then 23 years old, wore a $25,000 ruffled dress by Vera Wang that was modeled after Princess Diana’s wedding gown.

However, she admitted to Cosmopolitan in 2019 that although everything appeared picture-perfect, it wasn’t.

Consider the idea of a child bride. I was purposefully kept as this all-American girl, whatever that means. It was really well-managed,” she remarked.

For me as a human, there was no freedom. It was nearly identical to being a prisoner.

 

 

She said that Mottola had a “oppressive” presence during their marriage in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.

“I was unable to speak with anyone who was not under Tommy’s authority. I was unable to go out or interact with anyone. In her own home, I was unable to move around freely,” she wrote.

They got divorced in March 1998 after splitting up in December 1996.

Derek Jeter

After their separation, Carey flew headlong into a relationship with then-New York Yankees baseball player Derek Jeter.

She later confessed in her autobiography that things went physical while she and Mottola were still together.

She stated they met at a meal when they bonded over their common experience of having multiracial parents, before the two exchanged phone numbers.

“Derek was only the second person I had slept with ever (coincidentally, his number was two on the Yankees),” she added.

Carey wrote that she thought Jeter was her soulmate, and he taught her she “could “have something beautiful on the other side of the hell that was [her] marriage.”

The relationship lasted about a year, and Carey said Jeter was the catalyst “to get out from under Tommy’s crippling control.”

Luis Miguel

In 1998, Carey went on a blind date in Aspen, Colorado, where she met Mexican artist Luis Miguel.

He sent her a Bulgari necklace the following day after they went out to supper.

She writes in her autobiography, “I soon discovered that was his way; he was an actual, over-the-top Latin lover for real,”

The two parted ways after three years of dating.

He occasionally “had a gloomy cloud hovering over his head,” she said, adding, “I did my best to support him emotionally, but I was going through my own s–t and it got to a point where I could no longer deal with it.”

Eric Benét and Christian Monzon

In the early 2000s, Mariah made her feature film debut in Glitter opposite actor and singer Eric Benét, and the two were rumoured to date between 2000 and 2001.

Her next known relationship was with Christian Monzon, a model who starred in the music video for her 2005 song, Don’t Forget About Us.

The two reportedly dated for about a year.

Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon was selected to feature in the music video for Carey’s song “Bye Bye” in 2008.

At the 2005 Teen Choice Awards, the two had met.

 

This time, they started a fast-paced courtship that ended with a wedding in her Bahamas home two months later.

She said she had “never felt a love like this” and that the two were “soulmates” in an interview with People.

A year later, the couple went back to the Bahamas to reaffirm their vows.

The couple’s pregnancy was revealed in October 2010. On April 30, 2011, their third wedding anniversary, twins, a son named Moroccan and a daughter named Monroe, were born.

By 2014, there were rumors that their marriage was failing. By the end of that year, Cannon verified that the two had broken up.

In November 2016, their divorce was finalized.

“To be honest, I think Nick and I could have worked it out between the two of us, but egos and emotions got inflamed,” Carey wrote in her book after reflecting on the breakup. It was difficult.

James Packer

Carey allegedly went out hand in hand with Australian media tycoon and businessman James Packer in June of 2015 after meeting him at a film premiere.

The two were photographed on the red carpet at a film premiere in September.

In January 2016, Parker reportedly proposed with a 35-carat diamond ring that she made fun of for being “so heavy I can not lift my arm up.”

However, it was over by October of that year, as People confirmed the couple had broken up and canceled their engagement.

Packer later told The Australian the relationship came “at a low point in my personal life” and was a “mistake for her and a mistake for me.”

In 2020, Carey said she left him out of her book because the relationship didn’t matter enough to be included.

“We didn’t have a physical relationship, to be honest with you,” she revealed.

 

Bryan Tanaka

Carey quickly moved on with her backup dancer-turned-creative director, Bryan Tanaka, who was 14 years her junior.

Packer had reportedly been concerned about Carey’s relationship with Tanaka, who had worked with her since 2006.

After they split, the two were pictured kissing in Hawaii.

By the start of 2017, they were Instagram official and spent that Christmas together.

The two enjoyed an on-off romance before eventually calling it quits for good in December 2023, with Tanaka revealing the news.

Carey, at 55, is not thought to be dating anyone.

She has a net worth of over $500 million, and makes roughly $4 million every year only from royalties from her Christmas songs.

She resides in a penthouse in New York with her children, who are now thirteen.