Katharine McPhee

Katharine McPhee Introduction

She might have finished runner-up on American Idol, but we’d gladly kick Taylor Hicks out of our bed to make room for Katharine McPhee. Hypothetically speaking.

Katharine McPhee Life Story

Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Valley suburb of Sherman Oaks, McPhee began singing at the age of 2 under the guidance of her mother, Patricia McPhee, a vocal coach and cabaret singer good enough to have a weird stage name: Peisha Arten. After graduating from Notre Dame High School—where she shined in school musicals and shared the hallways with one Rachel Bilson—Katharine attended the Boston Conservatory for three semesters, only to head back to the left coast to begin auditioning for TV pilots. (She was actually part of a failed mall-based MTV drama called You Are Here.) It was around this time that Katharine was heavy into bulimia, which is something you just don’t want to mess around with, mall-based dramas or no mall-based dramas.

In 2005, Katharine was persuaded by her boyfriend and parents to try out for American Idol. At her initial audition in San Francisco, she blew Randy, Paula and Simon away with her rendition of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child,” and about a million Ryan Seacrest interviews later, she was dueting with Meat Loaf in the Idol finale. Though she would lose out to Taylor “Salt and Pepper” Hicks, she would use the experience to shed 30 pounds and launch a recording career. Her self-titled debut album sold 116,000 copies its first week, and her “Over It” video reached No. 1 on both TRL and VH1’s Top 20 Countdown.

Katharine married her long-time boyfriend, actor Nick Cokas in Beverly Hills, California on February 2, 2008.

In January 2010 she released her second album "Unbroken," shortly after she cut off all of her hair and dyed it blonde.

In November 2010, Katharine released a Christmas album, "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You".