Like her mother, Pat studied voice and opera, and shortly after graduating in 1971 she married her high school sweetheart, Dennis T. Benatar. "I was married when I was 19 years old. And I truly believe that I did it just to get out of the house." (Although the couple did eventually divorce in 1979, Pat retained his surname.)

The two then moved to Richmond, Virginia where Pat found work as a bank clerk and later as a singing waitress. Pat described the gig as "a toilet of a job... we had to wear flapper dresses." But she reasoned, "It was awful but it was better than working in the bank, and it was useful in that it started to get me on the road to not let people push me around. People were so obnoxious but you had to conquer their disdain or disinterest."

In an effort to further pursue her singing career, Pat and Dennis eventually moved back to New York in 1975 where she worked for a while on the cabaret circuit. Then two-years later, after performing pop tunes during the open-mike nights at the New York City comedy club Catch A Rising Star, Pat scored a her first management deal.

But Pat's big break happened on October 31st, 1977 after she dressed up as Catwoman for a Halloween party in Greenwich Village. Pat remembered, "I wore this costume that I kept on when I went back to Catch A Rising Star that night. And I performed all these songs at Catch that I had always performed, but now I had this outfit --- with black tights, and I was all legs with this black short top and a lot of black eyeliner. --- Material I had been doing for months to a clapping, yelling response now made people go insane. --- I remember standing there thinking 'What the hell is so different from all the other times? This was the same band, same songs, me singing just as good.' Then I realized: 'It's this look!'"

That look, her powerful 4-octive voice and the crowd's reaction brought attention to Chrysalis Records who ultimately signed Pat Benatar to their label in 1978. It was a few months later, while piecing together a band to back Pat in the studio, when she first met multi-instrumentalist Neil "Spyder" Giraldo. Pat recalled, "He was Italian and very good-looking, and he was 22. I called my girlfriend up that night and I went wild!"

The new band eventually relocated to Southern California to work on their debut album In The Heat Of The Night and then hit the road. Neil said of their romance, "It happened probably a week into the tour. And initially it seemed taboo. Generally nobody had relationships like that in bands because it tended to destroy them. That's why the situation in Fleetwood Mac was so controversial among musicians. --- Overall it was a risky maneuver, but the success of our relationship has always been this sense of partnership, of each of us doing our part and our best."

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo were married on February 20, 1982 on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Pat and Neil have scored over a dozen hit singles during the decade of the Eighties. Click on the song titles to find out more about Pat Benatar's most familiar hits.

All Fired Up Fire and Ice Heartbreaker Hit Me With Your Best Shot You'd Better Run

Invincible Love is a Battlefield Promises in the Dark Sex as a Weapon

Shadows of the Night Treat Me Right We Belong We Live for Love