Who

The bubbly, self-proclaimed real estate queen founded the Corcoran Group in 1978 and sold her stake in 2001.

Backstory

One of ten kids from a working-class Jersey family, Corcoran worked as a waitress, telephone operator, and flower delivery girl before founding a tiny rental agency in 1973 with a $1,000 loan from her boyfriend. Upgrading from rentals to co-ops, she launched the Corcoran Group in 1978, and although Corcoran herself had an undistinguished career selling property (she sold only three residences in more than three decades), she proved incredibly skillful when it came to recruiting and training sales talent. Over the course of two decades, she turned her agency into one of the biggest in the city, with more than 700 agents in 11 offices and annual revenues in excess of $4 billion. And as the agency expanded, Corcoran became known as one of New York real estate's more flamboyant figures, an image that paid off nicely when it came to building a brand in a notoriously bland industry. In 2001, just two days before Sept. 11th, Corcoran sold her company to Jersey-based real estate behemoth NRT for $66 million. She stayed on as chairman/figurehead for four years before leaving the company altogether in 2005.

Of note

Shortly after she quit her eponymous firm, Corcoran embarked on a mission to make herself a one-woman media brand in the mold of Oprah or Martha Stewart. Alas, her efforts didn't pan out. The production company she founded in 2005, Barbara Corcoran Productions, filmed a pilot for a reality show (one which starred Babs, of course), but it failed to generate interest with the networks. Corcoran sated her hunger for the spotlight with copious speaking gigs and occasional appearances on shows like The View and Good Morning America before it was revealed in mid-2007 that CNBC had greenlit a Corcoran-hosted "wacky real estate show." The show has yet to materialize. In the meantime, Corcoran continues to work the lecture circuit and pens a weekly real estate column in the Daily News, "Ask Barbara."

In print

Corcoran published a 2003 memoir called If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails. (It was originally given the drier title Use What You've Got, but Corcoran decided to spice it up for the paperback edition after hardcover sales disappointed.) Her sophomore tome, Nextville, is due out in 2008, and will recommend places for people to live based on their "personality characteristics."

In person

With her signature pixie hairdo and loudmouthed antics, Corcoran has long cultivated the persona of a loony aunt. In keeping with her trademark kookiness, she writes a zany blog where she periodically posts as her alter ego Simon the Mouse.

Personal

Corcoran is married to Bill Higgins, an ex-Navy captain and FBI agent. They have six children, including Thomas, whom Corcoran had in 1994 at age 45 after getting an egg transplant from her sister Florence, and Kate, who was adopted by Corcoran in 2005. The family lives with their two Shih Tzus, Max and Becky, on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side. (It's Corcoran's 16th home in roughly 35 years.) She spends weekends at a seven-bedroom house on Fire Island, a converted one-room schoolhouse in the Dutchess County town of Pawling, and a condo in Utah.