Carrie Jean Yazel

As Carrie Jean Yazel will tell you, good things come to those who wait – or, in this case, to those who make Playmate. Growing up in Santa Clara County, California, Carrie was a bit of a late bloomer – at Los Gatos High, she waited, sometimes less than patiently, to be noticed by the boys. More often than not, she spent Friday nights in with a book and a stack of Beatles albums. “I can’t wait until the boys I had crushes on in high school – the ones who didn’t know I existed – see me now,” gushed Carrie in 1991, a freshly-minted Playmate. “See what you guys missed out on?” Following her high school graduation, Carrie moved to San Diego, where she took college courses and worked as a bikini model. She changed majors as often as she changed her clothes, but she was certainly never bored. “First it was hotel management, then catering,” she remembers. A young Carrie even considered a career in law enforcement, going undercover with the FBI. “I thought it would be so cool,” she says with a giggle. Fate stepped in just in time, and Carrie was handed the perfect undercover assignment – stripping down for the pages of Playboy, she showed off her beach body for scores of adoring fans. “Being in Playboy is really the ultimate compliment,” she says, remembering the moment she learned she’d be Miss May 1991. “The phone rang, I answered…and about a second later, I was jumping up and down, yelling, ‘I got it, I got it!’” In 1991, Carrie’s ambitions were to continue modeling, try acting and start a family with the right guy, and we’re proud to report that all of her dreams came true – she had small roles in Death Becomes Her, The Settlement and Stuck on You, and appeared on the TV series Silk Stalkings and Compromising Situations. She lives in Los Angeles with her writer-director husband and a daughter, and as beach-bodied as ever, she hits the surf in a bikini whenever the mood strikes. “My parents were always free about nudity,” explains Carrie. “I’ve never felt inhibited by my body, and I don’t understand people who do. I guess I’m lucky!” We’d say that ‘lucky’ is an understatement.