The daughter of Filipino immigrants who docked in post-war Hong Kong with little more than a saxophone and resilience, Rowena Cortes grew up in a North Point apartment humming jazz standards and brushing up on Cantonese tones between French class and stage lights.

Her father, Avelino Cortes, a jazz saxophonist and musical director at the Mandarin Oriental, turned their home into a launchpad. Her childhood was less about cartoons and more about camera calls. “I didn’t even know what I was singing about,” she recalls of her first EMI record, made at age five. “I just memorized the lyrics.”

That didn’t stop her from outshining adults onstage at City Hall to win The Star newspaper’s 1968 Talent Quest. Uncle Ray, a Hong Kong-based disc jockey, lifted her onto a box to accept the prize. By 11, she was a regular on Enjoy Yourself Tonight, Hong Kong’s iconic live variety show. “I was given a lot of chances,” she says. A song penned by her brother-in-law won her first prize in a local contest—and a ticket to Japan’s World Popular Song Festival. “I’m pretty shy,” she says, “(but) when I’m on stage, I’m like a different person.”

The turning point came in 1978, when Elton John—yes, that Elton—was shown a demo of Cortes’ voice by her then-management at Yamaha. He and Bernie Taupin wrote In the Morning just for her. “It has a really nice melody,” she says, still visibly touched by the memory. It’s a footnote in pop history that somehow never became a headline. She performed it again at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, under lights that once dazzled The Beatles.

Her path crossed equally iconic figures. She starred in John Woo’s Follow the Star at 15, and later co-headlined Lemon Coke (1982) with the legendary Leslie Cheung. “We would always hang out after the day’s filming… go to his home in Mei Foo, play mahjong,” she says. “I miss him very much.” Stardom had its routines—TVB shows, Japanese albums, movies, even her own variety series with Louie Castro.

She later got married to her first husband, with whom she spent about seven years. In 1990, following the birth of her son Brian, she made a deliberate choice to step off the carousel. “I wanted another kind of life; a quiet life,” she says. “The homework mum… I really wanted to be there for my son.”

For 23 years, the mic stayed silent—until a call from PolyGram’s Joseph Ip reignited the flame. Eason Chan wanted her on a duet. He Says, She Says became her comeback. “It was daunting,” she says. “But we hit it off right away.”

Then came Perry Martin. She first met the American guitarist in the studio when they were both barely out of school. Thirty years later, a Facebook reconnection led to a very public proposal—on stage during a 2012 concert. “We also got married on stage,” she adds with a laugh. “So we can say there were 3,500 people at our wedding.”

Now in her sixties and still performing, Cortes shows no signs of stopping. She recently reunited with old friends—Anders Nelsson, Joe Junior—for a concert at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. “It’s nice that I still get to perform,” she says. “It’s a privilege.”

(A curated excerpt from Rowena Cortes’ story, first published in PostMag.)