Opera singer Patricia Carey, Mariah Carey’s mother, passed away in the autumn of 2024.
Mariah Carey’s parents—Alfred Roy Carey and Patricia Carey—have had their share of ups and downs.
On the star’s part, she opened up and described her bonkers relationship with family in her 2020 released memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. The book explored her background, her memories of what she considered to be “significant neglect,” and her battle to accept her multiracial identity.
Mariah confirmed to PEOPLE in August 2024 that her sister and mother had passed away on that same day.
“Losing my mother this past weekend breaks my heart. Sadly, in a terrible turn of circumstances, my sister passed on that same day,” she said in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE.
Born on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, N.Y., the “Obsessed” singer was the youngest of three children born to Alfred, an Afro-Venezuelan aeronautical engineer, and Patricia, a White opera singer.
Patricia and her own mother suffered a great divide over the couple’s interracial marriage. It also brought problems for the family living in their area; Patricia revealed in a 1999 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that they were targets of racial prejudice and violent assaults.
Like Alfred, Patricia set her work aside to start a family and gave birth to daughter Alison Carey and son Morgan Carey before Mariah arrived.
When her parents split when she was three, the singer went with her mother, who kept sole custody over her.. In her biography, the “We Belong Together” singer remembered her early years with Patricia and said their relationship “has caused me so much pain and confusion.”
Red rebuilding her connections with her family found Mariah peace even as she worked through her trauma in treatment.
“My therapist urged me to rename and reframe my family for my sanity and peace of mind,” she said. “My mother became Pat to me, Alison my ex-sister, and Morgan, my ex-brother… I had to quit hoping for them to one day magically turn out the mother, big brother, and big sister I dreamed of.
Mariah barely visited her father on weekends during her childhood, and their relationship grew more strained when her career took off. Alfred passed away on July 4, 2002, from a rare type of cancer; the father-daughter couple worked on their connection before his death.
All you need to know about Mariah Carey’s parents, Alfred Roy and Patricia Carey, is here.
Mariah’s connection with her mother was “complicated.”
From an early age, Mariah’s connection with her mother, Patricia, was tense; her turbulent link has been the cause of “a cloud of sadness” all through Mariah’s life, she writes in her autobiography.
“Our narrative is one of beauty and treachery. Of love and desertion. Of survival and martyrdom, Mariah wrote. “I’ve emancipated myself from bondage several times, but there is a cloud of sadness I suspect will always hang over me, not just because of mother but also because of our complicated journey together.”
Mariah did not hold back when sharing freely about their ups and downs in her 2020 book. “Like many facets of my life, my path with my mother has been one of conflicting reality and paradoxes. It’s never been merely black-and-white; it’s a full rainbow of feelings,” she said.
The recipient of the Billboard Music Award said their relationship is complex: “Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, agony, guilt, appreciation, jealousy, adoration and disappointment. A complex love ties my heart to that of my mother’s.”
Alfred was on military duty.
Alfred was born in New York City on October 23, 1929. According to Mariah’s book, having been brought up in a cold, hard part of New York, her father had always searched for ways and freedoms that had been denied to his parents when he was growing up.
He enlisted in the military when he reached the right age. “My father joined the military — a logical choice for a man who’d had no say over the time or skin into which he was born — he yearned discipline, culture, and freedom,” she said.
Her family shunned Patricia for marrying Alfred.
Mariah studied Patricia’s complex connection with her mother, Ann Hickey, in her memoir in order to better grasp hers. Patricia married Alfred in 1960, and Ann turned on her for dating a Black man.
Ann told Patricia to lie about her marriage on the rare occasion she paid her mother and extended family a visit, on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1999. The couple faced constant prejudice throughout her relationship with Alfred. Patricia said the tensions were higher than ever once she moved into a “more affluent area.”
She told Winfrey, “One of our dogs was poisoned,” adding that their family was routinely targeted—on one occasion, Patricia said someone fired a gunshot through their living room window.
Mariah grew up spending Saturdays with Alfred.
After his time in the military and his divorce from Patricia, Alfred moved to Brooklyn Heights, where he was something of a “hipster,” Mariah wrote in her memoir. His main extravagance at the time was a classic Porsche Speedster. She eagerly awaited their weekly Sunday visits, which always revolved around a big Italian feast he’d spend the full day preparing.
However, as Mariah’s career took off, her weekly visits with her father became fewer and farther between. “Music, as a career, was not logical to him,” she wrote. Their weekly dates became more “sporadic” as she focused her energy on her budding career at just 12 years old.
“Gradually, ‘next Sunday’ turned into a month of Sundays. I had to let go of our Sundays so I could manifest my own day in the sun,” she said.
Alfred died of cancer in 2002
On July 4, 2002, Alfred died after contracting a rare form of bile duct cancer. In the months leading up to his death, he and the “Hero” singer mended their relationship, she shared in her memoir.
In the years since Mariah has honored his legacy in a variety of ways; shortly after he died, she penned an emotional tribute to him for her album Charmbracelet.
In “Sunflowers for Alfred Roy,” Mariah sings about finding forgiveness and peace in their relationship: “Please be at peace father / I’m at peace with you / Bitterness isn’t worth clinging to / After all the anguish we’ve all been through.”
Two decades later, the pop star restored her late father’s vintage sports car in honor of his birthday.
“The car you never got to finish is lovingly restored, complete with your spirit and my children.. Sorry I never told you, all I wanted to say🌻👐🏾❤️,” she wrote on Instagram alongside photos of herself and her twins, Monroe and Moroccan, posing in the newly refurbished car.
Mariah inherited her mom’s musical talent
Regarding Mariah’s pitch-perfect pipes, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree: Her mom, Patricia, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach.
Mariah focused more on singing and composing from the outset; she used music as an escape from her turbulent home life. She noticed her mother to be “jealous” of the skills that were being built up by the “Butterfly” singer. She said, “It goes with the territory of success if your loved ones are jealous. When it is mother jealousy at that critical age, you find yourself baring a wound forever.”
Mariah also related in her memoir a moving experience of singing in the car with her mother. “You should only hope that one day you become half the singer I am,” Patricia said to the adolescent.
Still, Mariah added, what she said haunts and pains me now.
Mariah and Patricia did a duet together on a Christmas album.
Later, Mariah and Patricia performed a very famous concert together as Patricia appeared alongside the “Queen of Christmas” in 2010 for a very lovely mother-daughter duet during the Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You on ABC special.
Complementing a gospel choir, they performed “O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus,” a tune they recorded for Mariah’s Christmas album. Patricia displayed her operatic range while the pop diva blasted the high notes.
Mariah and Patricia kept “boundaries” in their relationship.
Mariah loved her mama, always. She wrote “The Christmas Princess” for her.
“And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could,” she admitted. “Always, I shall love you the best I can”
Though The Christmas Princess is not biographical—that is, “it’s a fairytale”—Mariah told PEOPLE, it does reflect the life of the top-charting singer. Mariah, like the main character, learnt hard but worthwhile life lessons while still twelve years old. La Diva is the mother of Little Mariah as well.
“At that time I realized that I was different,” she told PEOPLE in 2022. “I wanted to be a chameleon, but I couldn’t. In other words, we had no money.” “Writing saved me,” Mariah said. She used poems and songs to deal with her feelings at that time. “Her music saved her,” Mariah said about Little Mariah. “No prince charming comes to rescue. She saves herself every day. Her mother died in August 2024,” Mariah said in August 2024. “The same day my mom and sister died. The exact reasons for their deaths are not known.” “I was lucky to be with my mom in her last week,” Mariah stated.
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