Inside Bruce Springsteen’s Complicated Dating History and 2 Marriages

Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from recounting the highs and lows of his personal life in his deeply confessional songs.

The legendary rocker — whose life and career inspired the 2025 biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White — drew from his love live in his songwriting from the earliest days of his career, including reportedly writing his classic 1978 song “Candy’s Room” about a tempestuous fling with artist Karon Bihari.

A marriage to actress Julianne Phillips coincided with the height of Springsteen’s popularity in the mid-1980s, but their relationship was short-lived and the musician channeled his disappointment into his soul-bearing 1987 album Tunnel of Love.

Springsteen officially got together with E Street Band member Patti Scialfa shortly after his first marriage broke down and they’ve been together ever since. The couple share three children: sons Evan and Samuel, and daughter Jessica.

Keep scrolling for a look back at Springsteen’s two marriages:

Who Did Bruce Springsteen Date Before His 1st Marriage?

A few of Springsteen’s early relationships are documented, including being with actress Joyce Hyser for four years in the 1980s.

Springsteen dated photographer Lynn Goldsmith and model Karen Darvin, though his most notable early relationship was with Karon Bihari. In 2002, she told The National Inquirer that Springsteen wrote his rollicking Darkness on the Edge of Town track “Candy’s Room” about their love life.

“The lyrics described my little apartment, what we talked about, when we kissed,” she recalled. “ It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. Bruce wasn’t all over the place screwing around with all these girls — and that’s what I liked about him.”

By the mid-1980s, Springsteen began performing with guitarist Patti Scialfa as part of his E Street Band. The two reportedly grew close throughout the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, before Springsteen abruptly married someone else.

When Did Bruce Springsteen Marry Julianne Phillips? How Long Were They Together?

Julianne Phillips met Springsteen in late 1984 and married him only seven months later at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Lake Oswego, Oregon, in May 1985.

The couple’s significant age gap — Springsteen was 11 years older than Phillips — was frequently fodder through the press throughout their four-year marriage.

Phillips never really spoke about what caused her marriage to break down, though Springsteen’s 1987 album Tunnel of Love was widely suspected to have drawn inspiration from the pair’s troubled relationship. Songs such as “Brilliant Disguise” and “One Step Up” reflected Springsteen’s growing discomfort with his personal life and he openly questioned whether it was possible to love unconditionally.

“One evening, while I sat across from my beautiful wife in an upscale Los Angeles eatery, a conversation formed silently inside my head. There, as we politely chatted by candlelight, hand in hand, a part of me tried to convince myself that she was simply using me to further her career or to get . . . something,” he wrote in his 2016 memoir. “Nothing could’ve been farther from the truth. Julianne loved me and didn’t have an exploitive [sic] or malicious bone in her body. Inside, I knew that, but I was out where the buses don’t run and couldn’t center myself around the truth.”

The newlyweds soon faced a more serious complication beyond Phillips’ Hollywood career. Springsteen confirmed in his autobiography that he fell in love with bandmate Scialfa while he was still married to Phillips.

“Patti was a musician, was close to my age, had seen me on the road in all of my many guises and viewed me with a knowing eye,” he wrote. “She knew I was no white knight (perhaps a dark gray knight at best), and I never felt the need to pretend around her.”

The musician went on, “I came clean to Julie as soon as I knew how serious Patti and I were, but there was no decent or graceful way out of it. I was going to hurt someone I loved, period … I dealt with Julie’s and my separation abysmally, insisting it remain a private affair, so we released no press statement, causing furor, pain and ‘scandal’ when the news leaked out. It made a tough thing more heartbreaking than necessary. I deeply cared for Julianne and her family and my poor handling of this is something I regret to this day.”

Phillips filed for divorce in California in August 1988, citing “irreconcilable causes” as the cause of the split. Their divorce was finalized the following year.

When Did Bruce Springsteen Marry Patti Scialfa? What Has He Said About Their Marriage?

Springsteen and Scialfa caused a major scandal with their decision to move in together shortly after his separation from Phillips.

“It’s a strange society that assumes it has the right to tell people whom they should love and whom they shouldn’t,” he told The Advocate in 1995. “But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, ‘Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but that’s life.”

Scialfa gave birth to her and Springsteen’s first baby, son Evan, in July 1990. In June 1991, Springsteen married Scialfa in a private ceremony at their Los Angeles home.

The two continued working together professionally as they expanded their family throughout the 1990s. Their daughter, Jessica Rae, arrived in December 1991 and their youngest son, Samuel, was born in January 1994.

Springsteen told London’s The Times in October 2024 that he and Scialfa made a decision early on in their marriage not to “expose” their children to their success.

“When they were little, if they heard me on the radio they would go, ‘Bruce Springsteen!’” he quipped. “It was their way of separating their dad from this abstract character who also seemed to be a part of their lives. A lot of times, we just didn’t expose them to it.”

Speaking to Variety in 2017, Springsteen reflected on how his marriage to Scialfa managed to stand the test of time.

“We’ve kind of developed natural boundaries. Some places we have a more professional approach, like if I walk into the studio while she’s working, I have certain boundaries where if she requests my opinion or asks for my help, I give it on a very professional level,” he explained. “When she comes onstage with the E Street Band she’s an E Street band member, and when we walk offstage we’re husband and wife.”

The duo regularly performed together as part of the E Street Band into the late 2010s, before Scialfa took an extended hiatus from touring to seek treatment for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. The duo reunited on stage for a poignant duet at the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in September 2024.