Maria Kanellis comes from a small town outside Chicago called Ottawa, where she was born and raised. As a child she was
a fun loving and playful girl who always dreamed of
one day becoming a star and to help her along the way at age 3 she took dance lessons that lasted for 17 years. Maria also started
doing
modeling at 15, landing her various
jobs that only helped her pursue her dreams. Once Maria graduated high
school she attended Northern Illinois University, majoring in fashion and at the same time managed to become a model of the Hawaiian
Tropic Girls after entering one of the local Hawaiian Tropic contests in 2002. Maria had thus begun in her eyes her first
real modeling job, traveling and modeling for Hawaiian Tropic but at the same time still keeping it together at college.
At
this point of her life everything was going great for the small town model and things were only getting better! In 2004 a
reality love show launched the air called "Outback Jack" and Maria had been one of the many beauties to compete for Jack's
love, unfortunately Maria was eliminated from the show in later episodes. Later in the year Maria entered herself in WWE's
Raw Diva Search Contest. With stunning looks and an impressive resume Maria quickly made through the series of eliminations
and the casting special on UPN, which selected the top ten finalists.
Week after week Maria had passed the votes of
the WWE fans and eventually got to appear in the upcoming WWE PPV: Summer Slam, that had her, along side the other contestants,
go head to head with WWE's current Divas, Trish Stratus, Victoria, Stacy Keibler, Molly Holly, Gail Kim, Nidia, and Jazz in
a game of diva dodge ball. Maria held her own well but fellow teammate Michelle McCool got the job done for the Diva Search
team and they ended up victorious over the WWE Divas. Maria survived the next couple weeks of elimination but eventually was
the 6th to be eliminated. Fortunately that was not the end for Maria concerning the WWE as Maria made her Raw debut Nov.1
as Raw's newest diva and interviewer! She, along with many of the eliminated contestants, had gotten a second chance for a
WWE contract. Once becoming one of Raw's newest divas Maria did some basic training at OVW, hopefully to one day wrestle but
as for now we can see Miss Kanellis giving interviews to fellow WWE superstars every Monday on Raw.
