Céline Dion told People that her dad didn’t want kids. But Thérèse Dion convinced her husband otherwise, and she and Adhémar Dion went on to have 14 children together. Céline is the baby of the family, which is to her benefit as her older siblings invested in her success. It was Céline’s brother, Michael Dion, who gave the icon her first chance to sing publicly when she was age 5. This experience ultimately set Céline on the path to stardom. “I sang a couple of songs,” she recalled to CNN in 2002. “When I started to feel the love and the warmth of the audience it got to me. I said to myself, ‘Really, this is what I want to do all my life. I want to be a singer.'”
Like Michael, other members of Céline’s family helped her achieve her dreams. CBC reports that Céline’s mother and brother Jacques Dion assisted her in writing and recording her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” a song so instrumental — pun intended — that René Angélil mortgaged his own house to land her a record deal after hearing it.
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Because Celine’s siblings positively impacted her career, the songbird paid it forward by gifting each of her brothers and sisters $100,000 at a family party. In 2017, her sister Claudette Dion told Le Journal de Montréal that the gift changed her life.
