When Barbara Corcoran turned 70, she famously threw herself a mock funeral . “Everybody thought it was a publicity stunt,” the puckish real estate mogul and Shark Tank producer/co-star says today. “I just did it to shock the shit out of my friends.
And they were shocked. If they had one moment of thinking I was dead it was worth it.” That’s why, for her 75th birthday this past spring, Corcoran, whose reported net worth is $100 million , tried something a little more staid: She spent a few days in the Cayman Islands with a group of friends—who all showed up dressed as her for a surprise—and left it at that.
“I couldn’t think of a better idea [than the funeral],” she admits. “I mean, that was competing against myself! And nothing sounded like as much fun.” Still, don’t mistake her good sense of humor to mean she’s at peace with getting older .
She’s admittedly vain—and though she uses her media career to justify the three facelifts she’s had (“Every 10 years!”) and easily shares about, she believes she would’ve had them anyway. “A lot of my self-image is what I see in the mirror,” she tells Fortune . “So if I’m looking fresh and happy, I feel good about myself the whole day.
” She also has a more serious preoccupation: that of developing Alzheimer’s disease. “A couple of months ago, I found my phone in the freezer,” she admits. She was scared—and while a series of cognitive tests with her physician confirmed she does not .
