Nick Cannon, 42, showed love to his ex-wife, Mariah Carey, 54, while recalling how she supported him when he was diagnosed with lupus in 2012. “She was my rock,” Nick said on the Sept. 21 episode of The Diary Of A CEO podcast. “She went hard,” Nick added about Mariah. “To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for how hard she went with the doctors, with me, my stubbornness.”
Nick and Mariah were married from 2008 to 2016 and had two children together. During that time, Nick was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune condition that causes chronic inflammation in many parts of the body. It’s the same disease that Selena Gomez has been battling since 2014.
During Nick’s interview, the Masked Singer host explained how much Mariah helped him at the start of his health battle. “She was the perfect helpmate, the perfect matriarch, the perfect mom, the perfect wife in those scenarios,” he said. “Granted, she is who she is, and dealing with all the pressures of being Mariah Carey. But then being loving enough to take on all of my stuff.”
However, Nick acknowledged that his lupus diagnosis “probably took a toll” on the former couple, “just because of the person I was in my head, and the struggles that I was dealing with.” He added, “It probably take a toll on our relationship, but it definitely brought us together.”
Despite their split, Nick reiterated how grateful he is for all the support Mariah gave him. “That’s what you do when you find a helpmate. When you find someone that you’re in matrimony with. You go hard for them,” he explained. “I feel like I went hard for her and will still go hard. I’d lay down my life for her today. It’s just what you do. It’s family.”
Nick has been talking up his ex-wife in interviews a lot recently. In March, Nick told The Shade Room why he still has so much love for Mariah even though they aren’t together anymore.
“It’s the fact that she’s the coolest person I’ve ever met. I get a lot of my delightful disposition from her,” he said. “She’s always happy, always doing for others, no matter what’s happening in life. When I saw that about her and how remarkable she was, I’m like…she’s not human. She’s a gift from God.”
Nick and Mariah are co-parents to their twins Monroe and Moroccan, 12. Since splitting from the singer, Nick has gone on to have ten more children with five other women. Sadly, his son Zen died in 2021 at five months old of a brain tumor.