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Mariah Carey has reflected on her past marriage to music executive Tommy Mottola, a period she has rarely addressed publicly over the years. In the September 2025 issue of Harper's Bazaar UK, she got candid about the emotional weight that period had on her and how she has learned how to live with it.
"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," she said. "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. It's a coping mechanism, but it's in my nature to laugh."
Mariah got married to Mottola who is 20 years older than her in 1993. He was the CEO of Sony Music then and the marriage ended in 1998. While the early years of her career skyrocketed thanks to Mottola signing her to Columbia Records, Carey says his grip over her music and personal life was tight.
"I wanted to do more R&B, more urban music, and any time I would bring that up, it would get shot down," she recalled. "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."
In her 2019 Cosmopolitan interview, Carey even said, "You might want to picture a child bride," when describing the early days of the marriage. She added that she had little freedom and that their mansion in Bedford, New York, felt more like a prison.
For his part, Mottola acknowledged that their relationship had been deeply flawed. He pointed to the 1996 Grammy Awards where Carey received six nominations as a key moment when tensions between them started to escalate and their marriage began to fall apart.
Mariah said working on her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, helped her process those memories. "It was also therapeutic," she shared. "But it was a tough situation to go to sleep listening to it... I'd wake up and be kind of freaked out."
Now a mother of twins shared with her ex-husband Nick Cannon, Mariah manages the ups and downs of co-parenting by ensuring both parents remain actively involved in their children's lives and that the time they spend with each of them is enjoyable and balanced.
Her new album, Here for It All, is out September 26, with the tracks "Type Dangerous" and "Sugar Sweet" already streaming.
