Who Is Drew Carey: Biography, Net Worth & More

Breaking down the facts behind Who Is Drew Carey: Biography, Net Worth & More—read on to discover the essential highlights.

Lewis and Beulah Carey were the parents of Carey. He was reared in Cleveland, Ohio’s Old Brooklyn area as the youngest of three brothers (Neil was born in 1946 and passed away in 2010; Roger was born in 1952). Drew’s father passed away from a heart attack when he was eight years old. In the marching band at James Ford Rhodes High School, where Drew received his diploma in 1975, he played the cornet and trumpet.

He completed his education at Kent State University (KSU) and joined the fraternity Delta Tau Delta. Due to his subpar academic achievement, he was expelled twice. In addition, he graduated from KSU three years later. Carey joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1980 after graduating from college, and worked as a field radio operator in Ohio’s 25th Marine Regiment for six years. In 1983, he temporarily relocated to Las Vegas, where he briefly worked as a bank teller and a server at Denny’s.

He started his comedic career in 1985 by doing as disc jockey friend David Lawrence advised and visiting the library to borrow books on joke writing. Lawrence had been paying Carey to create jokes for Lawrence’s radio show in Cleveland. He was appointed Master of Ceremonies at the Cleveland Comedy Club the next year after taking first place in an open mic competition. Over the following few years, he gave stand-up comedy performances in Cleveland and Los Angeles. Participating in the 1988-Star Search gave him his first exposure to the public. When Carey made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in November 1991, he was performing stand-up comedy. Carey was invited to sit on t he couch next to Carson’s desk after his performance that night, which was an uncommon honor for a comic. Carey joined the 14th Annual Young Comedians Special on HBO that same year, and he also made his television debut on Late Night with David Letterman. Drew Carey: Human Cartoon, Carey’s own stand-up comedy show from 1994, received a CableACE Award for Best Writing and broadcast on Showtime.

Early on in his stand-up career, he was cast in supporting roles in television series, where he created the persona of a helpless middle-class bachelor. Carey played a brief appearance as a cab passenger in the 1993 movie Coneheads. Carey and John Caponera co-starred in the NBC sitcom The Good Life in 1994. Bruce Helford, one of the show’s writers, engaged Carey as a consultant on the television program Someone Like Me after the show was canceled.

Carey and Helford created and produced the plot for The Drew Carey Show after their time on Someone Like Me. A fictitious version of Carey, together with his group of boyhood pals, dealt with the pressures of life and work in the sitcom. On ABC, the program debuted on September 13th, 1995. Carey expressed his anger at the censors in his memoirs and his inability to use the crude comedy that was a staple of his stand-up acts. In the first seasons, Carey was initially paid $60,000 per episode until renegotiating for $300,000. By the last season, his episode salary had increased to $750,000. The program enjoyed strong ratings throughout its first few seasons, but it was cancelled due to dwindling viewership and rising production costs (around $3 million per episode). Over the course of the show’s nine-year run, there were 233 episodes in total, and Carey was one of four performers who appeared in each one.

Carey has consistently written throughout his professional life. Prior to producing sitcoms, he began his stand-up career by creating his own material. Carey wrote about his early years and the death of his father when he was eight in his autobiography, Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined, which was released in 1997. He also disclosed that he had experienced molestation once, had episodes of melancholy, and had attempted suicide twice by ingesting a lot of sleeping tablets. His time in college fraternities at Kent State University and his professional career up to that point are covered in the book. The title suggests that the book contains many dirty jokes (one at the beginning of each chapter), references to beer, and a lot of profanity. For three months, the book was listed as one of The New York Times’s top sellers.

Carey was grinning widely, wearing casual clothing and a green contest entry top, but without his regular glasses. He is holding a long-lens camera.
While filming Drew Carey’s Sporting Adventures in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in June 2006, Carey attended the World Cup Fest.

As a press photographer, Carey occasionally works at soccer matches for the US National Team. Under the alias Brooks Parkenridge, his photographs are offered for sale through wire services. In the summer of 2006, he attended the FIFA World Cup for his television program Drew Carey’s Sporting Adventures.