Bruce Springsteen is one of the most famous musicians on the planet, and his wife Patti
Scialfa has been right there alongside him for decades.
This rockstar duo has the kind of marriage that transforms cynics into believers, but
their union isn't without its quirks.
Springsteen may have been born to run, but it took a return to the Garden State for him
to find true love.
He and his wife grew up just 10 miles apart, as Scialfa spent her youth in the New Jersey
town of Deal, which is a stone's throw away from the Stone Pony, the Asbury Park venue
where the couple first locked eyes.
When the pair originally crossed paths in 1983, Scialfa was living in New York City
working as a waitress.
She would regularly return to her childhood home on the weekends to spend time with family
and play gigs at the Stone Pony.
On one particular night, her performance impressed a certain audience member.
As she told New Jersey Monthly in 2016,
"I remember getting off the stage one night, and I was talking to a few of my friends,
and I saw this group of people slowly swarm up to me, like a tide rising toward me, coming
up looking over my shoulder.
I was getting really self-conscious.
And finally, I turn around, and Bruce is standing there.
He was such a magnet, he had all of these people around him."
Springsteen complimented her singing, and they soon formed a fast friendship.
Scialfa and Springsteen actually had a brief run-in with each other years before they officially
met.
As it turns out, Patti attempted to audition for her future husband's band while she was
still in high school.
She was only 15 years old when she saw an ad in the Asbury Park Press from a touring
band that was looking for members who were willing to travel.
So she called the number, and Springsteen, who was already something of a local legend,
answered the phone.
When she told him how old she was, he let her down easy and said,
"Well, that’s a little young.
You should stay in school.
But good luck.
See you around."
Scialfa ended up taking his advice, and she eventually graduated and went to college in
Florida at the University of Miami, where she studied in their prestigious music program.
She was the only woman in the jazz department and ultimately transferred to NYU in 1974.
By the end of the decade, she was singing with the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury
Jukes.
That led to her landing high-profile gigs with acts like The Rolling Stones and The
New York Dolls' David Johansen.
In 1984, it all came full circle when she was invited to audition for Springsteen's
band, which was about to set off on their "Born in the USA" tour.
The sheer extent of Scialfa's musicianship is obvious when you consider that her future
husband gave her very little advance warning that she would be joining his band on tour
for the first time.
And it wasn't exactly the smoothest of transitions.
Springsteen had his reservations about inviting her to join the E Street Band for the "Born
in the USA" tour.
For one thing, the band had only had male members up to that point.
He warned her that he wasn't sure how having a woman in the band would work, but he invited
her anyway, just three days before the tour began.
At the time, Scialfa rushed to frantically learn the band's entire catalog, a massive
feat that she nonetheless accomplished to perfection.
But on opening night, Springsteen worried that she clashed with the band's rugged, working
class image.
As she revealed to Rolling Stone,
"I was wearing some kind of pastel kind of ribbony top, and Bruce goes, 'Maybe you should
wear something not as pretty.'
I tease him about it now.
I'm surprised he didn't ask me to get a haircut."
Springsteen ended up lending her one of his own t-shirts emblazoned with the words "Broadway
Motors."
It was an adjustment, but eventually the pair found their rhythm, both figuratively and
literally.
Springsteen and Scialfa are such an iconic part of New Jersey culture that it's hard
to imagine either of them leaving for Hollywood, the very antithesis of the Garden State.
But that's just what they did, and some of their hometown fans considered it a betrayal,
although it sounds like it was the best option for Springsteen's mental health.
It all started when Springsteen returned from his "Tunnel of Love" tour in 1988, fresh off
his divorce from his first wife, feeling lost.
As he told Rolling Stone in 1992,
"I slipped in between the cracks.
I was in a lot of fear.
And I was just holding out.
I made life generally unpleasant."
Things finally hit a breaking point, and Springsteen and Scialfa agreed to run off to his house
in the Hollywood Hills.
Shedding their Jersey roots did the trick to break him out of his funk, and the couple
ended up staying long enough to start their family.
As Springsteen told Rolling Stone,
"I'd come out here three, four months out of the year.
I always remember feeling just a little lighter, like I was carrying less.
So Patti and I came out here, and things started to get better.
And then the baby came along, and that was fantastic.
That was just the greatest thing."
But of course, you can't keep the Boss out of Jersey for too long.
In 2016, Scialfa confirmed to New Jersey Monthly that home for them is now Rumson, New Jersey
and they almost never go back to their house in Los Angeles.
Springsteen's relationship with Scialfa is different from the relationships he's had
in his past.
She helped him ditch his bad habits by refusing to indulge him.
In a 1992 interview with Rolling Stone, he admitted that he had a knack for self-isolation.
After all, he was the one who famously declared, "baby, we were born to run."
And that was true, in more ways than his fans realized.
By the time he started seeing Scialfa, he had become, in his words, "a master manipulator."
As he put it,
"I always had a way of moving off, moving away, moving back and creating distance.
I avoided closeness, and I wouldn’t lay my cards on the table."
But Scialfa was having none of it.
As Springsteen explained,
"She had a very sure eye for all of my bullshit.
She recognized it.
She was able to call me on it...When I got back to New York after the Amnesty tour in
'88, I was kind of wandering and lost, and it was Patti's patience and her understanding
that got me through.
She's a real friend, and we have a real great friendship."
With Scialfa's support, Springsteen finally entered therapy, which he described as "the
best thing" and "really valuable."
Bruce Springsteen may have sung about riding down a "Tunnel of Love," but that doesn't
mean he hasn't been afraid of that particular four-letter word.
In 1992, he told Rolling Stone,
"My specialty was keeping my distance so that if I lost something, it wouldn't hurt that
much.
And you can do that, but you’re never going to have anything."
But then he had a major, shocking revelation when his wife delivered their first child.
As he put it,
"I've played onstage for hundreds of thousands of people, and I've felt my own spirit really
rise some nights.
But when he came out, I had this feeling of a kind of love that I hadn't experienced before.
And the minute I felt it, it was terrifying.
It was like 'Wow, I see.
This love is here to be had and to be felt and experienced?
To everybody, on a daily basis?'"
Springsteen eventually learned to live with this fear and open his heart completely.
As he told Rolling Stone,
"To love something so much, as much as I love Patti and my kids, you've got to be able to
accept and live with that world of fear, that world of doubt, of the future.
And you've got to give it all today and not hold back."
"You can't have deep experience without error, mistakes, pain.
That's all just a part of human existence."
Springsteen and Scialfa may be one of rock's most enduring couples, but that doesn't mean
their marriage is always smooth sailing.
In Springsteen's 2016 autobiography Born to Run, he admitted that he and his wife fought
quite a bit in the early days of their relationship.
But ultimately this hasn't been a threat to their happiness together.
Instead, it may actually be the secret to their long-lasting union.
In the book, Springsteen was open about his annoying habit of passive-aggression.
It was something that reportedly damaged his past relationships, but Scialfa's fighting
style forced him to lay everything out in the open.
As he wrote,
"Patti and I fought a lot, which was a good thing.
I'd never argued much in most of my other relationships and it had proven detrimental."
Considering their marriage has lasted for decades, it's no surprise that they've had
their disagreements, but it sounds like they've found a healthy way to deal with them.
"Mr. Springsteen, what's the, what's the, what's the secret to a happy marriage?"
"That's bad luck to talk about."
"There you go."
Patti Scialfa is best known as a member of her husband's E Street Band, but she's also
talented in her own right.
Even the Boss is willing to admit that her skills don't really shine through their full
potential when she plays with him.
As he told Rolling Stone in 2004,
"Patti has only been able to use a small portion of her talent onstage with the E Street Band.
She's always been a beautiful songwriter."
Though Scialfa built her career around her husband, she's not always thrilled to talk
about it.
In fact, in 2004 she told The Guardian that she thinks journalists purposely ask her questions
about Springsteen to devalue her.
As she put it,
"I always feel it's the left-over cultural misogyny seeping in."
After all, for example, her 1993 solo album Rumble Doll received positive critical notice,
though you'd never know it by reading the rest of her media coverage.
Bruce Springsteen embodies everything that is New Jersey.
That's not the only reason he's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it certainly played
its part.
In 1999, he was inducted into the Hall by U2 lead singer Bono, and it only took his
wife 15 years to catch up.
Indeed, Patti Scialfa is one of the relatively few women who've been inducted into the Hall
of Fame.
In 2014, she took her rightful place in the history books along with her fellow E Street
band members.
All ten of them were inducted by Springsteen himself.
During his induction speech, he declared,
"Patti, I love you, thank you for your beautiful voice, you've changed my band and my life.
Thank you for our beautiful children."
For someone with multiple platinum albums and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
Bruce Springsteen's life is shockingly normal.
The weirdest thing about him may be how deeply in love he is with his wife.
We've all heard stories of rock stars cheating on their spouses while they're on tour, but
that's probably a lot harder when you're actually on tour with your wife.
But it doesn't seem like any thoughts of infidelity have ever crossed Springsteen's mind.
The rock legends live together in a nineteenth-century farmhouse in Rumson, New Jersey, about an
hour's drive away from New York City.
They're regularly spotted at their local grocery store, diner, and dry cleaners.
And they reportedly remain so deliriously in love to this day that they've been known
to gross out their kids by kissing in the kitchen.
In 2004, Scialfa told Rolling Stone,
"They say, 'Please don't do that in front of us.'
I said, 'Hey, you're going to be happy one day when you look back and know your parents
really loved each other.'"
"The heat is definitely still there between the two of you, and we all like to see that."
In short, Springsteen and Scialfa may be the most normal couple to have ever recorded a
multi-platinum album together, although that's admittedly a very small club.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.