• Patti Scialfa was originally a backup singer in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.
• Their relationship became public in 1988 after Bruce’s first marriage ended, and they married in 1991.
• The couple now has three children together: Evan, 28, Jessica, 27, and Sam, 25.

After nearly three decades, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Sciafla are still going strong.

This summer, the couple will celebrate another wedding anniversary, marking 28 years of marriage and even more working together in music. Bruce, 69, and Patti, 65, have been through it all since they launched their careers together on the Jersey Shore music scene in the 1980s.

Both New Jersey natives, Bruce and Patti ran in similar social circles growing up and as young adults. In fact, the two grew up just 10 miles from each other, according to Rolling Stone. And Patti, who had been dreaming of a career in music since she was a teen, already knew some of Bruce’s friends and bandmates for years before she met the Boss himself.

According to The Daily Mail, the two first met in 1980 at famed New Jersey bar The Stone Pony before Bruce’s music career had really started to take off. In 1984, as Bruce was planning his “Born In the U.S.A.” tour, Patti auditioned to be a backup singer. She became the only female member of Bruce’s E Street Band.

Bruce and Patti’s chemistry was obvious to fans—the two often performed passionate duets during the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour, and then again during the “Tunnel of Love Express” tour in 1988, according to an excerpt from the singer’s biography Bruce in the New York Daily News. However, in 1985, Bruce married someone else, model and actress Julianne Phillips. Their marriage fell apart just a few years later, and Julianne filed for divorce in 1988 (it was finalized in March of 1989)

That’s when sparks started to fly. Soon after separating from Julianne, Patti and Bruce moved in together.

“Patti’s been in love with Bruce for as long as I can remember,” her high school art teacher Curtis K. Smith told People magazine back in 1988. “We’d always heard this and that about Patti and Bruce from [her brother] Michael. It wasn’t a big surprise around here when it finally came into the open.”

In 1990, the couple moved to Los Angeles and had their first child, Evan. Just one year later, the couple married and welcomed their second child, Jessica. Three years later, their son Samuel was born.

Now the rock ‘n’ roll pair reside back where it all started—on the New Jersey coast—while they continue to make music and perform together. And while working together may be difficult for some married couples, these two make it seem easy.

“We’ve kind of developed natural boundaries,” Bruce told Variety. “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 twosome have always found new ways to lean on one another, too. The Boss recently revealed he’s been battling depression throughout his sixties (just like his father), but Patti has been right there with him.

“She was stable enough and strong enough and she brought a lot of love,” Bruce said, “so those were very healing things over a long period of time.”

In happier times, too, they’ve always been there for each other. One of their most memorable appearances of the last year was when Patti joined Bruce onstage for the final curtain call of his Tony-winning, year-and-a-half Broadway residency, “Springsteen on Broadway” (now available to stream on Netflix).

And looking back at it all, there’s one fact that might explain their long and happy marriage more than anything else. Bruce simply knows Patti understands him better than anyone.

“I hadn’t been involved with another musician before and so she had a lot of understanding of where I was coming from,” the singer told BBC Radio. “It was a lovely beginning to what’s been a very beautiful relationship.”