How Bruce Springsteen Patti Scialfa Balance Marriage and Performing

Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa have performed together in his E Street Band for almost as long as they’ve been married, but that hasn’t kept them from maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

“I always tried not to be a wife on stage. I really did,” Scialfa, 71, said during a Wednesday, October 23, appearance on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show. “I didn’t wanna bring that on stage and Bruce always has this great saying, ‘It’s like on stage it’s, you know, but as soon as I get my foot off the stage, it’s over baby.’”

Scialfa has been married to Springsteen, 75, since 1991 — 10 years after she first joined his E Street Band. While speaking to radio host Howard Stern on Wednesday, Springsteen admitted that his wife runs the show as soon as a concert ends.

“I’m only boss for three hours. Then I surrender the title, happily,” he quipped, referring to his famed “The Boss” nickname. Scialfa also “never” thought about being in a relationship with her employer.

The pair went on to explain, that despite their fame, they’ve managed to keep a relatively normal house, where they raised children Evan, 34, Jessica, 32, and Sam, 30.

How Bruce Springsteen Patti Scialfa Balance Marriage and Performing

“You walk into our home, especially when the kids were growing up, you wouldn’t know what anybody did for a living,” Scialfa recalled on Wednesday. “There was nothing in the house that indicated there’s somebody famous in the house or this is an overwhelming situation. There are no pictures that related to the work or anything.”

In fact, Evan only realized what his parents did for work through an elementary school classmate.

“Our kids didn’t know what we did,” Springsteen quipped. “One day, I think Evan came home from first grade, no, much later even, second or third, [and asked,] ‘Hey Dad, what’s ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out?’” (Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is a song off Springsteen’s 1975 record Born to Run.)

Scialfa is a songwriter in her own right, but the couple aren’t competitive with one another.

“I’m not gonna compete with him,” she stressed on Wednesday, adding that she and Springsteen also collaborate on music. “I was making my Rumble Doll record. We were living in L.A. We had just woken up and were talking about, you know, working, and he goes, ‘You know what you need on your record? You need one song where you really brag about yourself. Like, really just throw it out there and be really sexy and brag.’”

Scialfa continued, “It’s not quite my thing, right? So I said, ‘No, no, no, no. I’m so not doing that, Bruce.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, you gotta do it.’ And he started singing ‘Red Headed Woman.’ You literally got out of bed, picked up the guitar, and while I’m sitting in bed, you wrote ‘Red Headed Woman’ at that moment.”

Springsteen explained that he dedicated the track to his “fabulous wife.”

Scialfa is currently battling multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, but hasn’t let that affect her ability to perform with the E Street Band.

“They found it early on and she’s got really good doctors, who have helped a lot. But it does fatigue her, very intensely, and that’s a problem,” Springsteen told The Times of London in a profile published earlier this month. “I’m doing a three-hour show, which is fatiguing for me and I’m pretty much at the top of my health. But she’s been great.”

He continued, “We’ve worked out that she can come out and sing a few songs, and it’s important that the fans know what’s going on because they haven’t seen her in five years. Patti decided she owed that to her audience.”