At age 7 she asked for singing lessons. By age 9 she was offered but ultimately turned down a part in Broadway’s Les Miserables. “I wanted Carly to have a normal childhood,” said her mother, Gail Goodwin. Along the way she built a respectable resume including Hallmark and Kodak commercials, the Wonder Years, as well as singing at NBA Jazz games.

Carly, aptly named after singer Carly Simon, was born in the Adirondack mountain region of New York State. She lived there only until age 2 when her family first moved to Phoenix, Arizona and then to Southern California. By her early teens, her family had moved again to Park City, Utah. During her high school and college days, her family owned a ranch in the mountains of Montana.