In the Harper’s Bazaar UK’s September 2025 issue, legendary award-winning singer Mariah Carey opened up about her marriage to her ex-husband Tommy Mottola and how she copes when she remembers that experience.
Mottola, 77, gave Carey, 56, her breakthrough in music in 1988 when he was the president of Columbia Records. But their relationship transcended beyond business as they later became romantically involved and married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in 1993.
Mottola, who is 20 years Carey’s senior, was said to be controlling when they were together. The former couple ultimately divorced in 1998.
“Sometimes I feel angry about that time, but I think I’ve made peace with it – in any case, I vowed I’d stop talking about it,” Carey said about the treatment she had to endure from Mottola.
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“Humour is my release, and people who know me know that. I’ll make little jokes about what happened because otherwise I could make every day a sob story,” she added. “It’s a coping mechanism, but it’s in my nature to laugh.”
The Obsessed singer in the interview also touched on Mottola’s attempt to restrict her from doing certain kinds of music.
“I wanted to do more R&B, more urban music, and any time I would bring that up, it would get shot down,” she explained. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like the music I was making – I just felt there was more inside me that I wanted to release.”
This isn’t the first time Carey has spoken about her marriage to Mottola. In a 2019 interview with Cosmopolitan, the 56-year-old said, “You might want to picture a child bride.”
She added: “There was a conscious effort to keep me as this all-American, whatever that means, girl. It was very controlled. There was no freedom for me as a human being. It was almost like being a prisoner.”
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