Ariana Grande is opening up about a pivotal moment in her life. The 'Wicked' star detailed the moment she first met Gloria Estefan at the age of four and how meeting the icon might have influenced her professional path, as Gloria encouraged her to follow her dreams after listening to her incredible voice while on a cruise.
"This is a really insane story, actually," she told Deadline during a recent interview. "I was on a cruise with my family. We were on vacation. We went to karaoke and I sang, insanely, I was four, I don't know why I was this brave, but I got up and karaoke and sang ['My Heart Will Go On']."
Ariana described her song of choice as "insanely ignorant." "From the 'Titanic," she added, explaining that it was probably "the last thing" someone wanted to hear on a cruise. "I'm on a ship, leave that away," she said.
"It just so happened that Gloria Estefan was in the audience on this cruise, on a vacation with her family," she continued. "And she sort of invited me over to say hello, and my mom came with me, and she just said: 'You keep singing, I never would have done that at your age and you've got a gift.'"
Ariana said that Gloria insisted to her: "Keep going, keep going," which encouraged the now-singer and actress to achieve her dreams. This is not the first time Ariana talks about the important moment in her life. "It was crazy," she said to Alan Carr in 2016, admitting that she "kind of" discovered her.
Gloria told the New York Daily News in 2014 that she is a fan of Ariana now. Recalling the moment when they met, she said; “I literally went up to her and told her and her mom, ‘I don’t know if you plan on doing this, but this is what you need to be doing because you are an amazing singer.'”