Bruce Springsteen’s Wife and Kids: What You Need to Know About Patti Scialfa’s Relationship

The new Bruce Springsteen biopic, “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” portrays The Boss as a tortured genius and unreliable lover — and while that may have been true in the early ’80s, the real Springsteen has been happily married for more than three decades.

Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, both grew up in New Jersey. The couple first spoke on the phone when he was 21 and she was 17, according to Springsteen’s 2016 autobiography, “Born to Run.” She answered a newspaper ad seeking backup singers for Springsteen’s band, but he told her there was too much traveling for a high school student.

After a few more chance encounters over the years, in 1984 Springsteen saw Scialfa perform at Stone’s Ponya now famous rock club located in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She sang the Exciters’ hit “Tell Him” ​​and Springsteen said he “fell in love” with her voice.

“We found ourselves in the middle of a bustling crowd at the back bar as I introduced myself to her,” he wrote, “and the rest was a long, winding semi-yard.”

Scialfa joined Springsteen’s E Street Band in 1984.

After hearing her sing, Springsteen and Scialfa continued to meet semi-regularly at the Stone Pony “for cocktails and dancing,” he wrote.

While preparing for the “Born in the USA” tour, Springsteen invited Scialfa to join his live ensemble as a backing vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist.

Scialfa made his stage debut with the E Street Band on June 29, 1984 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The tour’s self-titled album, which quickly became a smash hit and was eventually certified diamond, had been released a few weeks earlier.

“Through Patti’s arrival, I wanted to accomplish two things. First, I wanted to improve our musicianship,” Springsteen wrote in his autobiography. “I wanted reliable, well-sung vocal harmonies.”

“Secondly, I wanted my group to reflect the evolution of my audience, an audience that was becoming more and more adult and whose lives were geared towards men. And women,” he added.

Scialfa remains an active member of the E Street Band to this day.

Springsteen met his first wife, Julianne Phillips, that same year.

Springsteen and Phillips were reportedly introduced by their agents in October 1984. He was 35 and she was 24. “We hit it off and began seeing each other regularly,” Springsteen wrote.

Springsteen and Phillips had a whirlwind romance and married in 1985, in Phillips’ hometown of Lake Oswego, Oregon.

At the time, Phillips was an aspiring model and actor, appearing primarily in music videos and television films.

Despite what Springsteen called a “press-feeding frenzy,” the couple kept the details of their relationship relatively private. In his autobiography, Springsteen said he feared he wouldn’t be able to survive two or three years with a partner because he had never done it before.

“After our marriage, I was hit by a series of severe anxiety attacks,” he wrote. “I was scared, but I did it not I want to scare my young wife. This was not the right way to handle this and it created psychological distance at the very time I was trying to let someone into my life. »

Springsteen and Scialfa fell in love while he was still married to Phillips.

Springsteen’s bond with Scialfa strengthened during the 1988 “Tunnel of Love Express” tour, performing songs he wrote about his ambivalent and fearful experience as a husband.

“Patti was a musician, almost my age, had seen me on the road in all my guises, and looked at me with a knowing eye,” Springsteen wrote in “Born to Run.” “She knew I wasn’t a white knight (maybe a dark gray knight at best), and I never felt the need to pretend with her. Julie never asked me either; I just did it.”

Their friendship blossomed into romance when his wife was on location filming, leaving him alone in New Jersey. He and Scialfa met, as Springsteen said, “under my supposed excuse of working on our ‘duets'”.

“There came a time when I looked at Patti and saw something different, something new, something I had missed and never experienced before,” he wrote. “In my life, Patti is a singularity. So, it started. At first, I told myself that it was just ‘a thing’. It wasn’t. It was THE thing.”

Springsteen said he told Phillips the news as soon as he realized the depth of his feelings for Scialfa, and they quietly separated. He added that he regretted the way he handled their separation.

“I put her in a terribly difficult position for a young girl and failed her as a husband and partner,” he wrote of Phillips.

Phillips filed for divorce in August 1988, citing irreconcilable differences.

Springsteen and Scialfa have been married since 1991 and share three children

Springsteen and Scialfa moved in together after completing the “Tunnel of Love” tour in August 1988, eventually settling in California. At first, Springsteen struggled with habits of avoidance and wrote that Scialfa was “patient…to a point.”

The couple often fought and eventually, Scialfa “threw down the gauntlet and exposed him. Stay or go”.

Although he was tempted to retreat into solitude, Springsteen said he could not bear to “throw away the best thing, the best woman I ever knew.”

“I stayed,” he wrote. “It was the most sensible decision of my life.”

Springsteen and Scialfa welcomed their first child, Evan James, in 1990. They married the following year in their estate in Beverly Hills.

Their only daughter, Jessica Rae, was born in December 1991. She would go on to become a professional equestrian and win a silver medal in the team show jumping competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021.

The couple welcomed their youngest child, Samuel Ryan, in January 1994. He works as a firefighter in New Jersey.

In 2022, Springsteen and Scialfa became grandparents for the first time when Samuel welcomed a daughter with his partner.

Springsteen also credited Scialfa with teaching him to be a more present parent, instead of prioritizing work.

“We created a life and love fit for an emotional outlaw couple,” Springsteen wrote of his wife. “This similarity binds and binds us very closely.”