June 8, 1991: Bruce Springsteen Marries Patti Scialfa

Share This:

Hired as a back-up singer on Bruce Springsteen‘s Born In The U.S.A. tour in June 1984, Patti Scialfa had grown up on the New Jersey shore, and became friendly with The Boss in the early 1980s when they would run into each other at shows at the Stone Pony nightclub in Asbury Park. A 1971 graduate of Asbury Park High School, Patti had previously toured and recorded with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes and had even auditioned for the E Street Band in the 1970s.

Not long after Scialfa joined the E Street Band as its first female member, Springsteen started dating and then married model and actress Juilanne Phillips on May 13, 1985, in the midst of the more than year-long tour. By his next tour in 1988 for the Tunnel of Love album, Scialfa had come forward from background singer to singing duets with Springsteen. At the same time his marriage was not working out. On the road Bruce and Patti’s onstage chemistry reflected the fact that the two were also falling in love. Springsteen and Phillips divorced in 1989.

Bruce, then 41, and Patti, then 37, were married on June 8, 1991, but not in the Garden State. Their wedding was held in Beverly Hills, CA – she wore a white gown, he a black tux – and was attended by such classic rock contemporaries as Bonnie Raitt, John Fogerty and Jackson Browne. The couple have two sons and a daughter.

Watch them perform “Brilliant Disguise”

Springsteen starred in Springsteen on Broadway, a solo acoustic performance at the Walter Kerr Theatre, which is an intimate night with the musician, his guitar, a piano, and his stories. The sold-out run was extended several times and continued into December 2018.

Tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are available here and on StubHub.