As a child, Shania would sometimes have to go hungry and her family struggled to make ends meet. At age 21, bad turned to worse when her parents were killed in a car accident and Shania was left to be both mother and father to her younger siblings. But with determination and some help from her friends, Shania recorded her first album, Shania Twain, in 1993. The debut spawned the hit What Made You Say That, but didn't take the country world by storm. It did, however, get the attention of Sean Penn, who directed one of her videos.
More importantly, it was through this first recording that Shania met her producer/husband, Robert John (Mutt) Lange. The two made beautiful music together on her phenomenally successful The Woman in Me (1995) and Come On Over (1997) albums. They now live in a 12,000 square feet home/studio in upstate New York that sits on 1,200 hectares of land.
On Aug. 28, 1965, Shania was born Eilleen Regina Edwards to Sharon and Clarence Edwards in the border-city Windsor, Ontario. She was only two years old when her parents split. Sharon relocated her daughters to Timmins, Ontario, where she met and fell in love with Jerry Twain, a full-blooded Ojibwa.
Sharon and Jerry were legally married when Shania was six years old and, when the adoption went through, Shania and her sisters Jill and Carrie-Ann legally became registered as 50% North American Native. Sharon and Jerry had two sons, Mark and Darryl.
Jerry raised his family in his culture, teaching them to hunt and trap on the Mattagami Reserve. Shania even worked for his tree- plating business.
So it's not surprising that when she chose a stage name, she picked Shania, an Ojibway name meaning: I'm on my way. While starting out, Shania played up her Native heritage by sharing stories of trapping rabbits in early interviews.
Sadly, this later came back to haunt her when people called her a liar for saying she was part Native. Yes, her mother is of Irish descent, and her blood father is French-Irish, but the father she knew and the man who raised her was Native and instilled his culture in her.
After the death of her parents, Shania struggled to keep her family together. She eventually got a full-time job doing what she loves -- entertaining. She performed everything from country to Las Vegas-style shows, nightly at the Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario.
From there, she went on to be signed to a record deal and the release of her self-titled debut. When Lange first contacted her, she didn't know he was the producer such acts as Def Leppard, Bryan Adams and AC/DC.
The two became close friends over the phone and the first time they got to meet face to face was at Fan Fair 1993 in Nashville. They married in 1994 and Twain has a 2*-carat diamond to mark the ceremony.
The quiet pair, who have co-written most of Twain's hits, now plan to move to Switzerland to avoid the spotlight that constantly shines on them in North America.
A couple weeks before Shania's 31st birthday, her hometown of Timmins held a homecoming fit for a queen. They presented her with the first-ever key to the city and named the main street of Algonquin Boulevard to Shania Twain Way. She also left her hand prints in cement and had a garden named in her honor.
