Barbara Corcoran

Corcoran was born in Edgewater, New Jersey,[3] the second of 10 children[7] in a working class Irish-Catholic family.[8] Her mother, Florence, was a homemaker. Her father, Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., bounced from job to job throughout Corcoran's childhood. At times her family relied on deliveries of free food from a friendly local grocer. Corcoran remembers her father as a man who occasionally drank too much and who treated her mother with disrespect and condescension, particularly when he'd been drinking.[9]

Due to dyslexia Corcoran struggled throughout her schooling. She attended a local Catholic elementary school and started high school at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood. After flunking several courses her freshman year, she transferred to Leonia High School where she graduated a D student.[10][11]

She faired little better in college, but graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas College with a degree in education in 1971.[12][13]

After graduating college, she taught school for a year but soon moved on. She had worked a total of 20 jobs by the time she was 23,[14] including a side job renting apartments in New York City. While she was a waitress, her boyfriend convinced her to work for a real estate company.[15] She wanted to be her own boss, and in 1973, while working as a receptionist for the Giffuni Brothers’ real estate company in New York City, co-founded The Corcoran-Simonè with her boyfriend, who loaned $1,000.[16][10] She split from her boyfriend 7 years later after he told her he was going to marry her secretary[15] and she then formed her own firm, The Corcoran Group.[17]

In the mid-1970s, she also began publishing The Corcoran Report, a newsletter covering real estate data trends in New York City.[13]

In 2001, Corcoran sold her business to NRT for $66 million.[18][19][20]

In September 2017, Corcoran was announced as a contestant for season 25 of Dancing with the Stars, where she was partnered with Keo Motsepe.[21] She is the third Shark Tank "shark", after Mark Cuban and Robert Herjavec, to take part. On September 25, 2017, Corcoran and Motsepe were the first couple eliminated.

In 2020, she appeared on the sixth season of Grace and Frankie as herself.

Corcoran lives in Manhattan with her husband, Bill Higgins, a retired Navy captain who participated in the Gulf War[22] and is a former FBI agent. The couple married in 1988.[23] Corcoran gave birth to their son, Tom, in 1994, via in vitro fertilization, with an egg donated by her sister Florence.[20][18] The couple later adopted a daughter, Kate.[2]

In 2001, she purchased a 2,700 square-foot apartment in a co-op building on Park Avenue for $3.5 million.[20]

In 2015, Corcoran purchased a penthouse unit on Fifth Avenue for $10 million.[24]

In 2019, for her 70th birthday, she held a mock funeral.[4]

Her hobbies include skiing and going to the beach.[25]

Corcoran has dyslexia and was labeled the ‘dumb kid’ by her teachers and classmates. According to Corcoran, the bullying "drove her to work harder and learn the skills she needed to succeed."[26]

• If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons On Your Pigtails: and Other Lessons I Learned From My Mom; (aka "Use What You've Got"). New York City: Penguin. 2003. ISBN 1-59184-002-3. (co-authored with Bruce Littlefield)
• Nextville: Amazing Places to Live Your Life. Springboard Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-446-17827-3.
• Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business. SPortfolio Trade. 2011. ISBN 1-59184-418-5. (co-authored with Bruce Littlefield)

• Official website