Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo's 35 years of love and music
Pat Benatar and her lead guitarist-turned-husband, Neil "Spyder" Giraldo, managed to navigate through married life, while selling more than 25 million records worldwide and producing 19 "Top 40" singles.
It's your classic rock and roll love story. Girl with a microphone meets boy with a guitar, reports "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King.
Benatar embodied the '80s with rebellious songs, a sexy stage presence and a whole lot of spandex. But while all eyes were on Benatar she only had eyes for her lead guitarist.
She said when they first met it was like a "blinding white light."
"I just saw him and all I kept thinking to myself is like, 'There you are. Where have you been?'" Benatar said.
Giraldo had the same feeling.
"The remarkable thing is she was so normal and all the girlfriends I had in the past, nothing against all those old girlfriends, were pretty crazy, she was like perfectly normal, and I'm saying 'How did this ever happen?'" he said.
The innovative musician, songwriter and producer led Benatar towards a more aggressive sound.
Their partnership inspired Benatar's debut album, featuring her breakthrough hit "Heartbreaker."
But their personal partnership was not without controversy. Management was worried about Benatar's image as a wife and a mother.
"It was kind of left over from that old Hollywood weirdness when the movies when they didn't want people to know that people were married to each other and things like that," Benetar said. "It was shocking (because) was so late in the game. I mean we had our first daughter in 1985. It's shocking to me that this was still going on."
But in 1981, the powerhouse couple fronted a new era in music.
"Pat Benatar was the second video that we ever aired on MTV and Spyder was the first guy to play guitar," former VJ Mark Goodman said. "She did some of the most famous videos that we ever played on MTV, Things that are etched in all of our memories."
After three decades of marriage, the couple continues to make music together.