With the first anniversary of Prince's death (April 21) almost upon us, books and other memorabilia dedicated to the Purple One are beginning to pop up.
The one garnering the most attention so far is a The Most Beautiful: My Life With Prince, a memoir by his first wife, dancer Mayte Garcia, published Tuesday.
While a previous excerpt delved into their grief following the 1996 death of their newborn son, Garcia shared happier memories of Prince on NPR's Morning Edition Tuesday morning, recounting how she met him and how their relationship progressed.
Here are the five biggest revelations from the interview:
Garcia had her eye on Prince from the time she was nine
"'I'm going to marry Prince or Luis Miguel," she told her mother in grade school. "One of the two."
She was right: They married in 1996, when he was 37 and she was just 22.
Mama Garcia can claim part of the credit for bringing them together
When Garcia, a ballerina and belly dancer, was 16, her mother told her to make a demo reel of herself dancing. They brought the tape along with them to one of Prince's concerts and somehow, they got backstage, where her mom put it in the hands of one of his backup dancers.
'My daughter's a dancer," she recalls her mother telling the dancer. "And she'd just love to perform for him or have him see her tape, because she's been doing this for such a long time."
Four times out of five, that story would probably end with a noncommittal answer and the tape in the nearest trash can. But not this time.
"I'll never forget it: The dancer was like, 'Sure! I'll be right back,' and he took it." Around five minutes later, Garcia got a response. "Prince would like to meet you. He saw your tape."
They were pen pals at first
"Old-school pen pals," she emphasized to interviewer David Greene. "There was no email back then. It was truly innocent. There was never a side-eye look or anything. It was true friendship."
Prince raided her closet
"I bought this cute, little striped outfit with tight pants," she recalled. "He liked the cut of it."
Then the diminutive rock star, who stood only 5-foot-2, would "cut them and then he put shoulder pads in them!"
Garcia was forced to adopt a new wardrobe strategy: "I only wore skirts because he would take all my pants!"
He took a "foo foo master" on tour
When Prince would spend weeks and months away from Paisley Park on tour, he longed for a sense of familiarity in his surroundings.
Enter the foo foo master, a decorator who would set the singer's hotel rooms up to his liking. "The piano was always a requirement," Garcia noted, adding that the instrument had to be "covered in lamps and veils." Oh, and don't forget the candles and lava lamp.
"He never stayed in a room without the foof," she said. "It was a little world that he created."
