Corcoran started the Corcoran Group real estate firm in 1973 with her boyfriend Ramone Simone. In the early '80s, Corcoran told Business Insider, their relationship turned sour and she decided to split the business, retaining her half as the Corcoran Group. Simone was not happy that Corcoran would maintain as much as she did.
"On the way out the door he said, 'You'll never succeed without me,' she said. Those words were both the worst and, strangely, the best thing he could have said.
"[T]hat was the "advice" that got me through the thick and thin, mostly because it slammed me in my gut, and I didn't want to let him have the satisfaction of seeing me go down," she said. "That's what I always leaned on when things were bad. I'd be like, 'Damn, I'm not gonna let him see me [like this].'"