Before Michael Jackson was the King of Pop, he was a young man in love.
The woman was Stephanie Mills, the powerhouse singer who played Dorothy in the Broadway musical “The Wiz.” In a new interview, she opened up about those early days with Michael, and the stories are as sweet as they come.
The two met in the 1970s and grew close fast. Stephanie says she really thought it might go all the way. “I thought, you know, we might get married,” she said.
They spent their time together doing simple, ordinary things. They would go for long drives around the valley in Los Angeles, with Michael behind the wheel of his Rolls-Royce. Just the two of them, riding around, talking and laughing.
But if you looked at a map of where they drove, you’d notice something odd. They stuck to the same regular streets, over and over. They never once hopped on the highway.
There was a reason for that.
Stephanie says the two of them rode up and down Ventura in his Rolls-Royce all the time because Michael was afraid to get on the freeway. The young star who would one day command the biggest stages in the world didn’t want to merge into that fast traffic. So they took the slow roads instead.
She tells it with such warmth. In the same chat, she shared a few other little things about him that will make you grin.
Here’s Stephanie telling those stories about Michael herself.
Stephanie Mills sharing her memories of a young Michael
Her Michael stories start a few minutes in, and the small details are the best part.
Take the popcorn. Stephanie says Michael loved movie-theater popcorn, but he was too shy to walk up and buy it himself. So he’d always send her in with the very same instruction every single time. The exact words are too good to give away here, but they’ll make you laugh.
She also says Michael had one funny habit whenever he was in someone’s home. He was, in her words, “very nosy.” And she remembers his sweet tooth too, especially his love for warm chocolate chip cookies.
There was a tender side to all of it. For a while, Stephanie even stayed with Michael at his apartment on Sutton Place in New York, back when he was in town filming the movie version of “The Wiz.”
It’s a side of Michael most people never got to see. A shy young man who loved simple things like warm cookies and movie popcorn, and who felt safest taking the slow road with someone he cared about beside him.