While Brad Paisley waited until he’d actually met Kimberly Williams to shoot his shot, Nick Cannon had no such reservations. He began flirting with Mariah Carey, his celebrity crush, publicly when they were still virtual strangers.
In a sit down on One TV’s “Uncensored,” Cannon told the whole story of how Carey went from his dream girl to his real-life wife. “At one point, I was like ‘I’ma get Mariah Carey.’ It turned from like celebrity crush to ‘Nah, she’s about to be my girlfriend.'” Those in his inner circle were understandably skeptical. After all, Carey was a global superstar and Cannon wasn’t exactly an A-lister yet. But the “Wild n’ Out” creator had a plan— he was going to get her attention through the media. “She had heard me speaking all of these positive, secret little nothings in interviews,” he recalled, “She’s like, ‘I heard all those nice things you been saying about me.’ I was like, ‘They’re true!”
It took a few months, but eventually, Carey asked Cannon to direct and star in the music video for “Bye, Bye” in 2008. Cannon must have turned the charm game up to the max once they were on set, because just a month after the couple sparked dating rumors they were married. They welcomed twins in 2011 but ultimately ended up getting divorced in 2016. Despite Carey and Cannon’s split, the pair remain committed co-parents and have been publicly supportive of one another through health scares and family expansions.