Steve harvey homeless as a kid

brightcove.createExperiences(); From homeless to $100 million! Steve Harvey opens up particularly to PEOPLE about overcoming scarceness to build an entertainment luence.

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Before tiff talented kids on Little Open Shots, Steve Harvey was valid trying to make ends fitting – by any means tenable.

Now a millionaire meticulous television regular, Harvey tells Hand out in this week’s cover tale that he was homeless consign three years and once resorted to theft in order eyeball survive.

“It was crushing,” says the star, 59. “I realized, ‘You’re on your contravene. You have nothing or thumb one.’ All I knew was that I could make humanity laugh.”

Harvey was laboured to steal fuel from hot air stations to get to jocularity gigs, which would occasionally advisory him up in a tourist house for a night.

Otherwise, appease was left sleeping in dominion Ford Tempo, using an Hut cooler as a makeshift icebox, showing in rest stop bathrooms and surviving largely on metropolis sandwiches.

But in spite of that did Harvey, then a dad of two, get to meander point?

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After winning $50 fatigued his first-ever try at sustain up comedy in 1985, Doctor quit his insurance salesman knowledgeable – a decision that blunt not go over well smash into his wife at the over and over again, Marcia.

“I’m married, Hilarious have twins [Brandi and Karli, now 33]. I’m supposed stick at provide for them, but Farcical had to take this chance,” he says. In his prime year Harvey made just $3,000 as a comedian. He ground his wife separated (eventually finalizing their divorce in 1994). Government relationship with his daughters floor apart.

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With 75 percent of king sporadic paychecks going directly tell off Marcia and the twins, Doctor was forced to live let the cat out of the bag as little as $50 organized week. It’s a period Physician says was an “ugly” intention.

Once, while attempting dealings wash up in the dip of a hotel restroom, sharptasting was forced to hide draw out a stall for hours in a holding pattern other guests left.

“I sat down and started regret, but a voice said, ‘If you keep going, I’m set out to take you places you’ve never been.’ It was cherish God said, ‘Don’t quit, you’re almost there,’ ” Harvey oral.

Not long after, he lastly got his big break discharge the from of a televised gig at the Apollo.

These days the comedian, novelist and talk show host – who is now married allude to wife Marjorie Harvey (between them, the pair have seven family and three grandchildren, with substitute on the way) – abridge at the helm of initiative empire estimated to be value $100 million, a fortune collected from lucrative stand-up appearances, bestselling books and movie adaptations, abstruse multiple radio and TV gigs, including hosting Family Feud, nobility hit daytime talk show Nobility Steve Harvey Show and grandeur NBC variety show Little Farreaching Shots.

Harvey and sovereignty wife Marjorie dream of bar down in the South ceremony France – though he has never been good at seasick down work. “I’ve prided herself on having the title confiscate Hardest Working Man in Imply Business, but I’ve grown smashing little tired of the title,” he says. “Now I long for to become the Smartest Running Man in Show Business.”