Bruce Springsteen announced this weekend that his wife, E Street Band singer Patti Scialfa, is in remission from multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer in which abnormal plasma cells grow out of control.
According to Billboard, Springsteen made the announcement in an eight-minute prerecorded video shown at the gala for the Pan-Mass Challenge, an annual bike race that raises funds for cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Strumming an acoustic guitar from inside his home studio in New Jersey, Springsteen addressed the room before turning personal.
"As you know, Patti's been living with her multiple myeloma for over eight years," Springsteen said in the video, which was uploaded by a fan. "But now, thankfully, she is in remission."
Scialfa, 73, was diagnosed in 2018. She had previously discussed the diagnosis publicly in the 2024 documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, noting that the treatments affected her immune system and made her more deliberate about where she goes and what she does. Springsteen, 76, has been married to Scialfa since 1991, and the couple has three grown children.
In the video, Springsteen praised healthcare workers and doctors who have helped Scialfa and other patients. "Like millions of families facing cancer, we've learned what every patient learns. Hope has a face," he said. "It's our physician who refuses to stop searching and caring. It's our nurse who sits beside us when we're scared and always makes our journey a little bit easier."
Springsteen also addressed what he called drastic cost-cutting by the Trump administration, saying that "medical research isn't an idea, it isn't politics, it isn't a line in a budget. It's the reason families find hope when hope seems hardest to find. When we lose sight of that, we lose sight of one another, and that's too high a price for anyone to pay."
He told the PMC audience that pan-Massachusetts Challenge founder and chairman Billy Starr had first invited him to ride in the event back in 1984. Addressing the broader work of the organization, Springsteen said, "Since 1980, you have inspired a community that has done something remarkable. You've never stopped believing that ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference. And because of that countless lives have been saved."
He closed by connecting the event's mission to themes that have run through his own music for decades, noting that he has spent the better part of half a century writing about people who keep believing even when life gives them every reason to give up. "That's always been the best of America to Patti and I," he said. "Now, more than ever, the world needs more everyday heroes like the folks who make up the PMC."
