Tonight from CNN:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: My wife is doing wonderful. She looks amazing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Well, a lot of people might dispute that. I guess everybody has different ideas of what is healthy and what is beautiful. Coming up, what has life with Bobby Brown done to singer Whitney Houston. You'll see.,

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAHN: Well, just a few weeks ago, more than a million viewers tuned into the Bravo network's new reality series, "Being Bobby Brown." A lot of them probably wanted to see his wife, singer Whitney Houston. Their 13-year marriage parallels her decent from the top of the music charts into drug addiction and rehab. But now, could things be finally turning around?

Well, Bobby Brown himself, spoke with us about his wife, for tonight's "People in the News" profile.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN (voice-over): It's June 27th, 2005. The press has gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for the reality series premiere of "Being Bobby Brown." The red carpet, just a few feet long. The VIPs, few and far between. The woman emerging from the limousine, a shell of the superstar we once knew.

BROWN: As you know with disease, you're never fully recover. As long as you've been using, is how long it's going to take you to, you know, to kick it. You know, but my wife is doing wonderful. She looks amazing.

(SINGING)

ZAHN: Flashback 12 years: If ever an artist had one moment in time, this was hers.

CASTRO: It was almost superhuman.

WILLIAMS: Just Streisand.

MUSTO: You could not escape "I Will Always Love You."

(SINGING)

ZAHN: And with that stunning ballad, all eyes were on Whitney Houston: 1992's "The Bodyguard" ushered in a musical icon, a crossover talent with blinding beauty, unlimited potential.

Nine albums, seven consecutive number-one singles. There were Grammys, there was glory. She was pop's greatest love of all.

CASTRO: This was not something that was cooked in a recording studio. This was raw, raw talent.

ZAHN: With a cousin named Dionne and a music mogul named Clive, Whitney Houston was packaged, polished, primed. But long before the darkest of days, there was pressure. And there were hints of rebellion ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can we go through?

WILLIAMS: What she found is that: Oh, my gosh, I can't, you know, bring my soup up to my mouth anymore. I can't -- you know, I'm so micro-managed and so under a microscope. Oh, I'm just ready to be who I used to be.

And then she meets Bobby.

(SINGING)

ZAHN: Bobby was Bobby Brown, R&B's chart-topping bad boy and Mr. Brown's prerogative? Make Whitney Houston his wife.

WILLIAMS: Nobody expected it to last. Everybody thought it was a fleeting moment. All girls love bad boys. You know, it's one thing to date one, it's one thing to do one, but you married him?

MUSTO: Well, the public is so believing that even as we've read about Bobby using drugs and getting into all kinds of trouble with the law, we somehow thought: Well, poor Whitney. Never thinking she might be doing drugs, too. And then we finally saw her on that Michael Jackson tribute, where she was all skin and bones and had to be digitized to look human and you knew something was terribly amiss in the Bobby Brown household.

ZAHN: Fourteen years later, the marriage survives, but what about the voice? The superstar? Where is Whitney Houston?

PASTOR BUSTER SOARIES, FAMILY FRIEND: We believe that Whitney Houston can come back. What would it take? A miracle. But people of faith believe in miracles.

ZAHN: She was born Whitney Elizabeth Houston on August 9th, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey. Her pedigree reads straight out of music's hall of fame.

CASTRO: If you went into a lab, you could not concoct a better pop icon in the beginning than Whitney Houston. I mean, you had Cissy Houston as your mother, Dionne Warwick as your cousin and you had, you know, Aretha Franklin dropping in every so often into your church to sing a few bars and then leave.

ZAHN: Whitney's mother was gospel and blues great Cissy Houston. And not only did she work with the King and the Queen, she also led the choir at New Hope Baptist Church. It was here that a little girl found a great big gift.

SOARIES: Whitney sang in church every Sunday morning, New Hope Baptist Church. She just had a sense of timing. She had vocal clarity. She had range and she sang with power.

ZAHN: She adored her father, revered her mother. They nicknamed her Nippy and pampered her from the start. SOARIES: Cissy and John always wanted more for Whitney than to just be a singer. They wanted her to be educated, articulate. They wanted her to surround herself with good people. And so they were very protective of her. They really wanted to keep the brakes on her so that she did not become consumed by her own talents.

ZAHN: But Nippy was drawn to the spotlight. By 1981, the 18- year-old was modeling and auditioning for studios when cousin Dionne Warwick introduced her to the best ear in town.

MUSTO: Clive Davis is one of those music biz icons who creates talent, makes careers and can remake careers. And he had remade Dionne Warwick to be hot again. He'd remade Aretha Franklin to be relevant again. And when he set his sights on Whitney Houston, he knew that this was the next Dionne and Aretha combined.

ZAHN: Coming up, the making, the madness, the molding of a mega star.

CASTRO: Everybody knew that her first album would be huge. No one expected it to be this huge.

ZAHN: But later, drugs, demons: Bobby Brown speaks.

BROWN: She took it wrong, I took it wrong and then the 911 people took it wrong.

If you did not see it, read the whole thing... What a waste of talent. Strong words hate? Well let's put it like this... This woman has one of the most beautiful voices I can remember. A true gift, and not only has she thrown it away, but she has the nerve to spit in the face of those who question her stupidy, with the kind of arrogance, that is... frankly, unbelievable!

ZAHN: In December 2002, an infamous interview with ABC.

HOUSTON: First of all, let's get one thing straight. Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack, let's get that straight. OK? I don't do crack. I don't do that. Crack is whack.

WILLIAMS: And approximately two weeks after Diane Sawyer, I did my radio interview that became a light-bulb moment in my career.

So, Whitney, as far as you stand with drug use, is there drug use going on at this present time?

HOUSTON: Who are you talking to?

WILLIAMS: To you, Whitney.

HOUSTON: No, you're not talking to me. I'm a mother. Only my mother has privy to that information. You talk to your child about that. Don't ask me no questions like I'm a child.

WILLIAMS: The conversation lasted for 28 minutes and had lots of peaks and valleys.

What would you say the biggest issue is in you all's marriage?

HOUSTON: You people. You (EXPLETIVE DELETED) people like to run your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) mouth. Yes.

WILLIAMS: But most of all, what I got from the conversation was a woman still in the grip, in the struggle.

A friend of mine asked me tonight do I feel sorry for her. The answer, no, I dont feel sorry for anyone that God blesses with talent and opportunity, and who pisses it away in an orgy or self gratification. Whitney is a talented idiot!

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