William Morris, the agency representing her, "told him they don't know if I'm going to do it again, and the guy said, 'We'll put in our offer now."'

Osmond's children also perform in the show, meaning she has come full circle.

Six of her eight kids — Abigail, 4; Matthew, 7; Brianna, 9; Brandon, 10; Michael, 15; and Rachael, 17 — are making the tour (children Stephen and Jessica didn't make the trip because they are attending college, and husband Brian Blosil is home attending to his own work). They are accompanied by tutors, just as their mother once was.

"That's how we've always done it," she says. "We did it when I was doing 'The Sound of Music' for two years. Believe me, I know the routine."

Osmond's professional career began almost the day she was placed on the knee of singer Andy Williams during his nationally televised variety show, at the age of 3. She was part of the famous Osmond show-business family from Utah, the eighth of nine children born to George and Olive and the only daughter.

Her first concert performance was a sold-out gig at Madison Square Garden alongside The Osmond Brothers. She began touring with the brothers, forcing them to change the name of their act to "The Osmonds." On the road some 260 days a year, Marie grew up backstage and on buses, airplanes and hotels.

"I've always defined a bed as any surface that would allow me to put my head down," she once told Larry King on his radio show. "I've curled up on an instrument case, across a luggage rack of a Greyhound bus and next to a backstage costume rack with my head propped against a hoop skirt."

She became a star in her own right at the age of 13 with her release of "Paper Roses," which made her the youngest female ever to produce a No. 1 song on the country music charts. As a pop and country singer, she went on to make nine solo albums and seven more with Donny, and along the way she collected gold records, Grammy nominations and several No. 1 hits.

She sang with a who's who list of entertainers. Recently, in connection with her duties as a judge on the TV show "Celebrity Duets," she was asked to list the stars she has performed with over the years. She began typing the list and stopped when she reached 300. The list included Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Ethel Merman, Groucho Marx, Bernadette Peters, Lionel Richie, Manilow, Barry Gibbs.

"Singer" was just one of her incarnations during her career. Marie and Donny hosted a hit variety TV show from 1976 to 1979. They hosted a daytime talk show on Fox that ran from 1998 to 2000. Marie had her own TV show — "Marie" — on NBC in 1981.