About Gloria Estefan
Gloria María Milagrosa Estefan (born September 1, 1957) is a Cuban-American singer, actress, and businesswoman. Estefan is an eight-time Grammy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and has been named one of the Top 100 greatest artists of all time by both VH1 and Billboard. Estefan's record sales exceed 100 million worldwide, making her one of the best-selling female singers of all-time. Many of Estefan's songs became international chart-topping hits, including "1-2-3", "Don't Wanna Lose You", "Coming Out of the Dark", "Turn the Beat Around", and "Heaven's What I Feel". Other hits include "Bad Boy", "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You", "Get On Your Feet", and "You'll Be Mine (Party Time)".
A contralto, Estefan started her career as lead singer of Miami Latin Boys, which was later renamed Miami Sound Machine. She and Miami Sound Machine earned worldwide success with their 1985 single "Conga", which became Estefan's signature song and led to Miami Sound Machine winning the 15th annual Tokyo Music Festival's grand prix in 1986. In 1988, she and Miami Sound Machine achieved their first number-one hit with "Anything for You".
In March 1990, Estefan sustained a life-threatening cervical vertebrae fracture when her tour bus was involved in a serious accident near Scranton, Pennsylvania. She underwent an emergency surgical stabilization of her cervical spine and post-surgical rehabilitation that lasted almost a year, but made a full recovery. A year later, in March 1991, Estefan launched her comeback with a worldwide tour and album, Into the Light.
Estefan's 1993 Spanish-language album, Mi Tierra, won the first of her three Grammy Awards for Best Tropical Latin Album. The album was also the first Diamond album in Spain. Estefan has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Las Vegas Walk of Fame and was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 2017 for her contributions to American cultural life. Estefan won an MTV Video Music Award, was honored with the American Music Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been named BMI Songwriter of the Year. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and has received multiple Billboard Music Awards. She is also a recipient of the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Billboard has listed Estefan as the third-most successful Latina and 23rd-greatest Latin Artist of all time in the U.S., based on both Latin albums and Latin songs chart. Hailed as the "Queen of Latin Pop" by the media, she has amassed 38 number one hits across Billboard charts, including 15 chart-topping songs on the Hot Latin Songs chart.
Gloria Estefan (née Fajardo García) was born Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García in Havana, Cuba on September 1, 1957 to parents José Fajardo (1933–1980) and Gloria García (1930–2017). Estefan's maternal grandparents were Spanish immigrants. Her maternal grandfather, Leonardo García, emigrated to Cuba from Pola de Siero, Asturias, Spain, where he married Gloria's grandmother, Consuelo Pérez, who was originally from Logroño, Spain. Consuelo's father Pantaleón Pérez served as the head chef to two Cuban presidents. Estefan's paternal side also had musical sensibilities, as the lineage had a famous flautist and a classical pianist.
Estefan's mother Gloria Fajardo, nicknamed "Big Gloria", won an international contest during her childhood and received a Hollywood offer to dub Shirley Temple's films in Spanish. However, Leonardo García did not permit his daughter to pursue the offer. Gloria Fajardo earned a Ph.D. in education in Cuba, but her diploma and other papers were destroyed by Cuban officials when she left for the United States.
Estefan's paternal grandparents were José Manuel Fajardo González and Amelia Montano. José Manuel was a Cuban soldier and a motor escort for the wife of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, and Amelia Montano was a poet. As a result of the Cuban Revolution, the Fajardo family fled and settled in Miami, in 1959, and ran one of the first Cuban restaurants in the city. In 1961, Estefan's father José participated in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was captured by his cousin, who was a member of Fidel Castro's army, and imprisoned in Cuba for nearly two years.[12] On his return, he joined the United States military and fought in the Vietnam War.
After returning from the Vietnam War in 1968, Estefan's father became ill with multiple sclerosis, attributed to Agent Orange exposure that he suffered in Vietnam. Estefan helped her mother care for him and her younger sister Rebecca, nicknamed "Becky" (b. 1963), while her mother worked to support them. Gloria Fajardo first had to regain her teaching credentials, then worked as a schoolteacher for the Dade County Public School system. When Estefan was nine, she alleged that a music teacher hired to teach her guitar lessons sexually abused her. She alleged that the man told her that he would kill her mother if she told anyone about the abuse. Estefan told her mother who alerted the police of the allegation; charges were not pressed because of the additional trauma she felt Estefan would undergo as a result of testifying against the perpetrator. When Estefan was 16, her father's illness led him to be hospitalized at a Veterans Administration medical facility.
Estefan became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1974 under the name Gloria Garcia Fajardo.
Estefan was raised Catholic and attended Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami, where she was a member of the National Honor Society.
Estefan attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where she graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in psychology and a minor in French. While attending the University of Miami, Estefan also worked as an English, Spanish, and French translator at Miami International Airport's Customs Department and, because of her language abilities, says she was once approached by the CIA as a possible employee. In 1984, she was inducted into the Iron Arrow Honor Society, the highest honor bestowed by the University of Miami.
Estefan became romantically involved with the Miami Sound Machine's band leader, Emilio Estefan, in 1976. She later revealed, "he was my first and only boyfriend". They married on 2 September 1978, and have a son, Nayib (born 2 September 1980), and a daughter, Emily (born 5 December 1994). Emily was conceived after Gloria's devastating tour bus accident in 1990; doctors told her she wouldn't be able to have any more children. The family lives on Star Island in the city of Miami Beach.
Estefan's daughter, Emily, is a recording artist and her son, Nayib, is an aspiring filmmaker and owner of the Nite Owl Theater in Miami. In June 2012, Estefan became a grandmother.
