Patricia Mae Andrzejewski (Pat Benatar)

Patricia Mae Andrzejewski was born to a Polish-Irish family in Brooklyn and grew up in Lindehurst, New York. She initially studied opera, like her mother. At 19, she married her high school sweetheart, Dennis T. Benatar, whose surname she adopted and became known by. Shortly afterward, she moved to Richmond, where she worked as a bank teller and sang in the evenings. She and her husband moved to New York City in 1975, where they divorced soon after. Pat began developing her singing career and, in 1977, was discovered at an amateur comedy club contest in New York City called Catch a Rising Star. After her successful performance at the club, Pat Benatar finally found her stage persona in a Halloween costume, which she originally used as a joke: "The audience was always polite, but on this occasion they went crazy," Pat Benatar later stated. "It was always the same songs, sung the same way, and then I thought, 'Oh my God... it's these clothes and this makeup!'" Because of that performance, she was signed to Chrysalis Records by its founder, Terry Ellis. She later married the band's guitarist, Neil Giraldo, with whom she has two daughters, Haley and Hana Giraldo. Pat Benatar is known for her tough attitude, having recorded a significant number of songs with battle metaphors and some addressing themes such as child abuse. She won four Grammy Awards for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance from 1980 to 1983, and was nominated four additional times in 1985, 1986, 1988, and 1989. Pat Benatar still composes and tours with her husband and has also become a spokesperson for Energizer. In the summer of 2005, her eldest daughter, Haley Giraldo, starred in the E! Entertainment Television reality show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive.