Celine Dion biography

In 1994, Dion happily merged her personal and professional life when she married Angelil, who is 26 years her senior. Angelil and his second wife had divorced in the 1980s, and, around this same time, he and Dion had begun a romantic relationship. Engaged in 1991, the couple tied the knot at Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica, in an elaborate ceremony that was celebrated throughout Canada.

Dion's international stardom was solidified by her performance of "The Power of the Dream,

" at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. That same year, her album Falling Into You won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best pop album. The following year, however, would hold even greater glory for Dion, with the release of the blockbuster film Titanic (1997), co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, for which Dion sang the theme song, "My Heart Will Go On." By the time the film raked in a record number of Oscar nominations (it won 11, including the award for best song), Dion's ballad had become ubiquitous on radio stations around the world.

Included on both the Titanic soundtrack album and Dion's own Let's Talk About Love, "My Heart Will Go On" propelled to both the No. 1 and No. 2 slots on Billboard's album charts, and sold a combined 50 million records worldwide. Let's Talk About Love also featured collaborations with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, the Bee Gees and Bryan Adams.

Canadian Diva

Dion received the National Order of Quebec, her province's highest honor, in April 1998. Later that year, she appeared alongside Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain on the high-profile televised concert Divas Live (1998) on VH-1.

While touring relentlessly and recording several albums (including S'il Suffisait d'Aimer and a holiday album, These Are Special Times), Dion was well rewarded at the Billboard Music Awards in late 1998, where she won six awards, including in the artist of the year and album of the year categories, for Let's Talk About Love. Her extensive 14-country tour, which had begun in the summer of 1998, culminated in a gala concert in Montreal on December 31, 1999, in honor of the new millennium.

In the first months of 2000, Dion announced that she was taking time off from her career in order to focus on her family. She and Angelil had been trying to have children for years, and eventually decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive. In May 2000, Dion underwent two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York in order to improve her chances of becoming pregnant.

Her efforts were successful, and on January 25, 2001, Dion gave birth to a boy, Rene-Charles. She has revealed in interviews that she had stored another fertilized egg in the fertility clinic and planned someday to give her son a sibling. On October 23, 2010, at age 42, Dion gave birth to twin boys. Angelil, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1999, is now in remission.

Lasting Legacy

After a two-year hiatus, Celine Dion returned in March 2002 with A New Day Has Come, which topped the charts in more than 17 countries.