Bruce Springsteen says his marriage to Patti Scialfa turned his life around after a chaotic first marriage.
The music legend, 74, took a trip down memory lane in a recent interview with TIME ahead of the October 24 release of his biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.
“I knew she saw me for who I really was," Springsteen began, confessing he was a “complicated, messy person” when they first came together.
"I didn’t have to pretend. I was broken. She was broken in her own way, and we were each other’s personal projects,” he told the magazine.
Springsteen and Scialfa first crossed paths in the early 1980s, when both were rising musicians in New Jersey.
Patti officially joined his E Street Band in 1984, and the pair grew close over years of performing together.
Their romance began after Springsteen’s marriage of four years to actress Julianne Phillips ended in 1989.
Now, more than three decades later, Springsteen and Scialfa share three children—Evan, Jessica and Samuel—and are grandparents to Samuel’s daughter, Lily Harper.