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By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN and DIANNA SMITH

After his sold-out concerts, when giddy, star-struck girls were screaming for the King of Pop, Nataline Aron recalls marching backstage and doing some yelling of her own.

But she wasn’t face-to-face with Michael Jackson the star; she was talking to Michael Jackson the young man.

“I’d say, ‘Michael, you’re getting too thin. Why aren’t you eating better?’ ” Aron said Thursday from her Delray Beach home. “He didn’t want me to mother him, but he would listen to me when I hollered at him.

“He always had beautiful features and I hollered at him when he was doing things to himself … trying to make him more white. I didn’t like that. I thought he was a beautiful young boy.”

Aron met Jackson through her son, Harrison Funk, a noted celebrity photographer who met the singer in 1983 and became a close friend. Funk continues to work as a family photographer.

When Jackson started his solo career, the country was still stuck on disco, Funk said. But Jackson changed everything.

“He was an innovator in dance, an innovator musically and an innovator in the shows he did. … You can look at Michael any way you want, but you can’t forget the fact that he changed musical history,” Funk said.

Offstage, Jackson was quiet and playful, sometimes starting food fights with his brothers. He adored his mother, his children and his fans, Funk said.

Many of those fans were amazed by how open and kind he was. In 2003, Jo Anne Wagner was getting her hair done in a Palm Beach salon when one of the workers ran in to say that Michael Jackson was buying ice cream at Sprinkles.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I was like, hold the water, hold the shampoo, I’m out of here,” Wagner said. She was still draped in fabric from the salon when she introduced herself to Jackson.

“He was such a gentle spirit and a true gentleman,” she said Thursday, recalling that he even waited as someone ran to Publix to buy a disposable camera. Wagner told Jackson she thought he was a good father, believing that would mean more to him than talking about his music.

“I felt that his heart was really in the right place,” she said. “I saw the one situation where he had the baby in the window and I just thought that was not what he was about.”

Jackson was searching for admiration even as a young man, Aron said, and he found it. But with his fame came the constant tabloid coverage.

“Nobody knew who he really was,” she said.

In the end, Funk said, “What is it that killed the man? It was the stresses of his life. He was 50 years old.”