Carl Icahn told a story about his dad that always makes him tear up
What got the multibillionaire so emotional? His relationship with his father.
Icahn explained that through the late 1970s, as he started to become pretty successful in finance, his father never asked him what he did for a living - or how he did it.
But he had a life-changing moment on a visit with his parents in Florida when his father finally pulled him aside, handed him a yellow notepad, and said, "'Here, explain to me what you do.'"
"I hugged him and said, 'You finally admit it,'" Icahn said. "It still makes me cry for some reason."
It sounds as if the two may have had a strained relationship: Icahn, who grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, said his parents would pay for his college education only if he was accepted by Yale, Harvard, or Princeton.
They never anticipated that he would actually apply, let alone get accepted.
"My parents never thought I'd amount to too much," he said.
But when Icahn shocked his parents with his acceptance by Princeton, his father, true to their deal, offered to pay the tuition. He did not, however, pay for room and board, so Icahn got a summer job as a cabana boy at Malibu Beach Club.
He started playing poker with the guests, and by the end of the summer he had earned himself $2,000 - well past the $750 he needed for room and board.
"You know, I was a hustler," he said.
Icahn's grandfather, who lived with his parents, told him not to tell his parents how much he had made and hid all of Icahn's savings for him for the next four years.
By the time he left college, Icahn said, he had amassed about $10,000 from playing poker.
"To this day, I'll never know why my father and mother never asked me where I got the money," he said.
Watch the full interview here.