Gabourey Sidibe’s Mother Alice Tan Ridley Dead at 72

The singer and breakout America’s Got Talent star made it all the way to the judges’ vote during the semi-finals back in 2010’s Season 5, but fell just short of that season’s Top 10. Jackie Evancho would go on to win that season.

Described as a “pillar of the New York singing circuit” in her obituary, the Georgia native was born December 21, 1952. After graduating from high school in 1969, she went on to achieve her teaching license and became a paraprofessional at PS 134 in New York City, working with differently abled children, per Nation.

The seventh of eight children in a musical family, Ridley would marry Ibnou Sidibe and go on to have two children of her own, Gabourey and her brother Ahmed. After a tumultuous marriage, Ridley and Sidibe would later divorce.

Outside of her family, Ridley’s obituary shares that she “sang at various venues to include the subway stations, primarily at Herald Square for over thirty years,” where she was often joined by family members, and that she was “a paid singer at The Harlem’s Cotton Club for many years.”

Outside of her America’s Got Talent run, Ridley also competed on Showtime at the Apollo in 2005, won the first episode of 30 Seconds to Fame in 2002. She would go on to perform “Amazing Grace” in David LaChapelle’s Rize documentary, and “America the Beautiful” in the 2005 film Heights.

She scored an Emmy for her part in Military Families in 2007, and released her debut album, Never Lost My Way, in 2016 at the age of 63.

She is survived by her children, brothers James D. “Jimmy” Ridley and Tommy Lee “Tom-Tom” Cherry, sisters Julia Van Mater-Miller and Mildred Riley Dent, as well as twin grandchildren.