Cynthia Ann Cindy Crawford

Cynthia Ann Crawford was born in DeKalb, Illinois on February 20, 1966, the daughter of Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf (née Walker) and John Dan Crawford. She has two sisters, Chris and Danielle. She has stated that her family has been in the U.S. for generations and that her ancestry is mostly German, English, and French. By appearing in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in 2013, she discovered that her ancestors included English nobility and continental royal families of the Middle Ages, and that she was descended from Charlemagne.
She was discovered at the age of 16 by a newspaper photographer who noticed her at work during her summer job of detasseling corn and took a picture of her. The photo and positive feedback she received were enough to convince her to take up modeling. She entered the Elite Model Management's Look of the Year contest at 17 and was the runner-up. Elite Model Management in Chicago then started representing her.
Crawford graduated from DeKalb High School in 1984, as valedictorian. She won an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering at Northwestern University, which she attended for only one quarter. She dropped out in order to pursue a full-time modeling career. After working for photographer Victor Skrebneski in Chicago, Crawford moved to Manhattan in 1986 and signed with the Elite New York modeling agency.