Coco Austin - Models, Timeline and Family

Coco Austin was born on March 17, 1979, in Tarzana, California, US, to Tina and Steve Austin. Both her parents were actors. Her Serbian ancestry comes from her maternal grandparents.

She has one younger sister, Kristy Williams, and three younger half-brothers. She grew up in Palos Verdes.

She got her nickname Coco during her childhood when one of her brothers started mispronouncing her name as ‘Co-co’ or ‘Cole Cole’ instead of Nicole. With time, her family started calling her as Coco.

At 10, she relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her family. She was a tomboy in her childhood and would play football and ride all terrain vehicles.

She started dancing ballet, taps and jazz at an early age and was introduced to stage performances by her mother. She performed in various stage productions at the Albuquerque Little Theatre in New Mexico.

In 1994, she stepped into the entertainment world by participating into a model and talent search for Beverly Hills studios, in Los Angeles. She became one of the five aspirants to get scholarship that allowed her to attend the school renowned for producing different celebrities. One of her classmates was the now famous American actress and entrepreneur, Jessica Alba.

After attaining 18 years of age in 1998, she started posing for calendars, videos and catalogues, specialising in lingerie, swimsuit and body modelling. Simultaneously, she also taught aerobics while attending a message therapy school.

In 1998, she became the winner of the Miss Ujena competition in Mexico.

She worked in parties and events at Playboy Mansion located in Holmby Hill, Los Angeles, California, renowned for the lavish parties thrown by its owner and founder of ‘Playboy’ magazine, Hugh Hefner.

She was recognised for her curvaceous figure, especially her large uniquely shaped buttocks considered to be one of her trademarks, and initially featured in low-budget R-rated films. These included ‘Southwest Babes’ in 2001, ‘Desert Rose’ in 2002 and ‘The Dirty Monks’ in 2004.

Over the years, she has guest featured in several television shows and specials, including Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav, The Dr. Oz Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and Hip-Hop Wives among others.

She has appeared in the popular American police procedural legal crime-drama TV series ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ for a few times.

On January 1, 2007, she released her 2007 Exotics Calendar DVD, which was shot in September 2006. The calendar not only earned around $1 million but also gave her recognition as a swimsuit model leading her to feature at the cover of ‘Smooth Magazine’.

She became the first Caucasian beauty to grace the cover of ‘Smooth Magazine’, also marking the highest sale record of the magazine till present. She went on to feature in covers of more than fifty national magazines apart from appearing in various other publications and launched her own self-titled quarterly magazine in 2007.

The American men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazine Playboy’s March 2008 issue featured her in a layout.

On June 24, 2008, she along with her husband Ice-T appeared on the Mark Goodson and Bill Todman created game show ‘Celebrity Family Feud’, a spin-off of ‘Family Fued’. The game show where the celebrity teams play for charity instead of as normal contestants saw the couple competing with the team of Joan and Melissa Rivers.

She then appeared in the American realty TV series ‘Ice Loves Coco’ with Ice-T. The show premiered on E! on June 12, 2011 in the US and Canada and chronicled the daily lives of the couple. It remained a hit with a total of three successful seasons comprising of 28 episodes and ended on January 6, 2013 with ratings of more than two million views.

On September 13, 2011, she came up with her fiction novel titled ‘Angel’.

The Jerry Mitchell created burlesque show ‘Peepshow’ that emerged as the longest running live show in the history of Paradise Nevada’s Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino saw Coco replacing model, TV personality and author Holly Madison in December 2012 for essaying the lead role of Bo Peep. She portrayed the role till September 1, 2013.

She also remained one of the guest judges of the American reality competition TV series RuPaul's Drag Race in its fifth season in 2013.

The 2013 released comedy drama film ‘Santorini Blue’ saw her essaying the role of Susan, the secretary of Dr. Lewis, played by her husband Ice-T.

Coco and Ice-T also hosted the American syndicated entertainment talk show ‘Ice& Coco’ that had a three week test run comprising a total of 15 episodes from August 3, 2015 to August 21, 2015.

Apart from acting and modelling, she also ventured into website design, an endeavour she took up while taking a hiatus from her modelling career for six years to help Ice-T with his busy schedule. Such venture saw her developing her own official website Cocosworld.com that with time garnered millions of hits per month.

Apart from her website Cocosworld.com and blog thecocoblog.com, she is quite active on social media as well. Her Twitter account ‘cocosworld’ boasts of having more than 1.15 million followers while her Instagram account ‘coco’ has already garnered over 2.9 million followers.

She has also launched her own clothing line Licious (Liciousclothing.com). It offers a wide range of apparels including swimsuits, jeans and dresses among others that cater to women of all sizes, particularly the modern curvy women.

Coco Austin was married to Mike Williams from May 11, 1999 to 2001.

In January 2002, she married American rapper, metal vocalist and actor Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow. The couple is blessed with a daughter named Chanel Nicole Marrow whose birth was announced on November 28, 2015.