Draft:Deborah Rae Mathers

Deborah Rae (Debbie) Mathers was born on January 6th, 1955, on a military base in Kansas. She was the eldest of five children of her young parents, Betty and Bob Nelson. Betty had married Bob at 14 years old and had Debbie at 15. Her parents relied on her to provide for the family, and by the age of eleven, she was gathering "surplus food" from the streets, along with most other household tasks, as she noted in her 2008 memoir My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem. Her parents separated in 1964, with her mother having children with another man. Her father remarried her mother, accepting his adopted children, one of whom was also named Debbie. She gave birth to Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known as Eminem, at the age of 18, on October 18th, 1972, in St. Joseph, Missouri, United States. Throughout Eminem's career, he and Debbie have gone through a turbulent relationship, with the peak of turmoil being in Eminem's 2002 song Cleanin' Out My Closet, which lead Debbie to file an eleven-million dollar lawsuit against him for defamation.