Who Is Paul Simon's Wife? All About Singer Edie Brickell

Musicians Paul Simon and Edie Brickell met on the set of 'Saturday Night Live' in 1988 and wed in 1992

Paul Simon and Edie Brickell are both Grammy-winning musicians in their own right, and they’ve found the perfect chord when it comes to love, too.

Having wed on May 30, 1992, the couple — who share children Adrian, Lulu and Gabriel — have a union that has stood the test of time.

“This is a good marriage,” Simon, who was married twice before, told Rolling Stone in 2011. “I didn’t know anything about rela-tionships. ... I didn’t put time into relationships. I thought, ‘It’s all gonna work out.’ Then it didn’t.”

But Simon and Brickell have made their family a priority. Simon, who lost most of the hearing in his left ear, announced his retirement from touring on X (formerly known as Twitter) in 2018, citing time away from his wife as one of his main motivations.

Related: Paul Simon's Life in Photos

They’ve both continued to make music — together and separately. Simon released his latest album, Seven Psalms, in 2023, while Brickell collaborated with Willie Nelson on the 2020 track “Sing to Me, Willie” and formed the band Heavy MakeUp.

"I'm not intimidated by Paul's abilities,” Brickell told The Dallas Morning News in 2003. “Everybody's perspective counts, no matter how many people relate to it."

Paul wrote a song for his wife called “Dazzling Blue” from his 2011 album So Blue or So What. “That’s Edie’s favorite color, blue. That’s really our story, Edie and I,” he told Rolling Stone.

So, who is Paul Simon’s wife? Here’s everything to know about Edie Brickell and her relationship with the artist.

She’s from Texas

According to The Washington Post, Brickell was born to Larry Linden and Eddie Brickell on March 10, 1966, in Oak Cliff, Texas.

Growing up, the “Little Miss S.” singer said that her family moved around a lot. “I was raised by a single working mother, we never went on vacation or anything like that,” she told The Herald in 2021.

The Dallas Morning News reported in 2003 that the singer’s parents split up when she was 3. Though she was reportedly raised with an older sister, Laura, two of her siblings were placed for adoption. “My mom just couldn’t take care of them,” Brickell told the outlet.

Of her father, Brickell told The Herald, “I saw my dad and I loved my dad, we had big dreams of seeing the world so it meant a lot to be an artist and express creativity for a living."

Her circumstances changed at 18 in 1985 when she took a shot of whiskey in a Texas club called B.B. Sundays, after which she joined a band called New Bohemians onstage for a song. "We had a magical connection and boom, that was it," she told The Dallas Morning News of the group.

In 2021, Brickell returned to Texas with Simon. “I wanted to have a closer proximity to the band,” the singer explained to the Austin American-Statesman. “We got a place down in Wimberley that has a big jam barn. … We’re having so much fun playing there.”

She met Simon on Saturday Night Live

Simon and Brickell had a meet-cute during a November 1988 episode of Saturday Night Live, for which she and her New Bohemians band were the musical guests.

“(Fame) was good because I did meet my husband because of our sudden success,” she told Tom’s Write Turns in 2006. “He took notice of me based on [our Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars] record.”

When it came time for their performance, Brickell said she was distracted by Simon’s gaze from where he was standing in front of the camera. "Even though I'd performed the song hundreds of times in clubs, he made me forget how the song went when I looked at him,” she told The Mirror in 2014. “We can show the kids the tape and say, 'Look, that's when we first laid eyes on each other.' ”

As for Simon, the “Sound of Silence” singer told The Howard Stern Show in 2023 that he wasn’t expecting to fall in love. “I was thinking, ‘I like the way she sings, I love the way she looks [and] I’m happy enough to be here.’ I’m not thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I’ll marry this girl.’ ”

The pair connected at the afterparty for SNL, where they made plans for Simon to come to Brickell’s next show at The Bottom Line in New York City. When he arrived, however, he met a lively crowd. “I went backstage to her dressing room, but it was packed,” he explained to host Howard Stern. “And I left, and I was driving away and I thought, ‘Why am I driving away? I came down here to see her.’ ”

Simon reversed course, calling Brickell to invite her to dinner at a Japanese restaurant nearby. “That was our first date,” he said.

However, their "first big date" took place when Simon visited Brickell in her hometown of Dallas after the pair hit it off in N.Y.C.

"I got off the plane, and there she was in this yellow 1972 pickup truck," Simon recalled in his documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.

She and Simon have been married since 1992

Simon and Brickell tied the knot on May 30, 1992, on Long Island, New York, in a small intimate ceremony. According to Brickell’s mom, who reportedly spoke to the Dallas Morning News, the newlyweds exchanged “simple gold bands — no big diamonds.”

“Basically, all they wanted to do was to be married very quietly without a lot of hoopla,” she said per the Orlando Sentinel.

The “You Can Call Me Al” artist shared a sweet Instagram photo with his wife in 2022 while celebrating 30 years of marriage. “A happy anniversary,” he captioned a snap of them embracing.

Simon was previously married twice before, to Peggy Harper from 1969 to 1975 and to actress Carrie Fisher, whom he referred to as a “special, wonderful girl” following her 2016 death, from 1983 To 1984.

Her and Simon's children are musicians

Simon and Brickell have welcomed three children together throughout their marriage: Adrian Edward, born in December 1992, Lulu, born in April 1995, and Gabriel Elijah, born in May 1998.

The couple's kids inherited an ear for music, with Adrian singing on Paul’s Oscar-nominated song “Father and Daughter."

Lulu opened up to PEOPLE in 2019 about her experience growing up in a musical family. “We used to make up songs as we were walking through Central Park, or in the bath,” she said. “We would always just write music.”

Simon shares his oldest child, Harper Simon, with his ex-wife Harper, whom they welcomed in September 1972. He is also a musician: Together with Edie, Harper formed a band called The Heavy Circles in 2008, per NPR.

“He produced a record I always wanted to be a part of," Brickell told the outlet of her stepson. "I wanted to sing on a record that had great grooves and beautiful sounds, and I never knew how to get them."

She and Simon make music together

Simon and Brickell mostly create by themselves, with Brickell telling The New York Times, “I have my own room. I go into it and write, and he'll go in his studio, so there's no interaction at all.”

Still, they occasionally come together for a collaboration — even if it’s just in private. Their first joint project was shelved to appease their son.

“When our oldest son was 5 we used to sing him this song I made up,” he told The Herald in 2021. “[Adrian] said ‘I thought it was my song; if you guys put it out it will be everyone’s song,’ so we abandoned the project.”

The pair also scrapped a duets record they had planned circa 2016.

“We … had recorded about three or four songs. I was on fire and in a writing mood when Paul said: ‘Slow down, stop writing and let me write some of the songs,' ” Brickell said. “Around that time Steve Martin started sending me his banjo tunes and that just took off.”

With her attention occupied, Simon recorded his 2016 solo album Stranger to Stranger.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the lovebirds did release a duet called “Like to Get to Know You”  in 2014. Six years later, Simon debuted a cover of the Everly Brothers’ 1958 track “All I Have to Do Is Dream” with daughter Lulu and neighbor Woody Harrelson, per Rolling Stone.

The husband and wife duo also share singing duties in the car. “If I start singing something then he’ll jump in and harmonize. Man, it’s so beautiful,” Brickell told Tom’s Write Turns in 2006. “He sounds great with anybody.”

She's private about her songwriting

Despite being married to Simon for more than 30 years and sharing many musical moments with him, Brickell told Vanity Fair in 2011 she keeps her songs close to her chest when it comes to her husband.

“I’m very private about showing [Paul] anything because, to me, songwriting is a very spiritual kind of practice,” she said. “It’s that evolving into your own, and that’s extremely important to me, to have that and to try to get into that sense of self-discovery. So he can’t be a part of that process.”

Sometimes, however, Brickell said Simon will get a first listen to her tunes unbeknownst to him. “When I first write a song, I’ll catch myself singing it all the time,” she explained to Tom’s Write Turns in 2006. “If he walks in and says, ‘Oh, that’s a cool song. Who does that?’ That’s a thrill.”

She has several albums with Steve Martin and a Grammy

Simon and Nelson aren’t the only ones Brickell has collaborated with: The songstress also has two albums with actor Steve Martin, as well as a live recording. Their 2013 effort, Love Has Come for You, even won a Grammy.

According to Brickell, who first met Martin at a dinner when she was 23, the Father of the Bride actor “was the only person to hand over this basket of crackers that was on his side of the table.” She told The Guardian, “I was touched because I’m used to being a wallflower."

More than 20 years later, the pair crossed paths again at a party, where Brickell complimented the Only Murders in the Building star on a song he had written and suggested a collaboration.

The twosome’s second album, So Familiar, became the basis of the musical Bright Star, which made its Broadway debut in 2016 and featured a score by them. The show was nominated for a Tony Award for best musical that same year, but lost out to Hamilton.

“It started as ‘Let’s try writing some songs,’ and the next thing you know, we’ve got a musical,” Martin told Rounder Records. “Everything about this feels so unexpected, yet at the same time it feels like it was meant to be. … The whole thing has been a very nice surprise.”

She and Simon are 25 years apart

Brickell was 22 when she met Simon, then 47, making for a 25-year age gap between the pair.

At the time of their encounter on SNL, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians had recently released their biggest hit, “What I Am,” which they performed that night. She wrote the song as an art student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The track peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1989 and made Brickell a bonafide MTV star.

"I write about how people feel, react and respond,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1998 about the song. “I don’t want to make people think or give them a message or even impress them. I only want to touch them where they live — in their feelings.”

When the couple realized how far apart they were in age, Simon told Stern, “There was kind of a silence between the two of us.”

She wrote a musical about the Hawaii false missile alert

In 2022, Variety reported that Brickell wrote a musical titled 38 Minutes about the false nuclear missile alert sent out to Hawaii citizens in 2018.

According to the outlet, Brickell, who received the terrifying message, wrote her show about a family on vacation whose lives are turned upside down by the alert. The workshop cast for the show included Carmen Cusack, who also starred in Bright Star.

She talked about her and Simon's relationship in her husband's latest documentary

When the first part of Simon's documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon premiered in March 2024, Brickell said that she'd been warned not to date him because of how he'd been portrayed in the media after he and Art Garfunkel went their separate ways.

“In terms of Art Garfunkel, they made it seem like Paul victimized him,” she said. “As opposed to the truth being that the guy walked away to pursue a different kind of career. Everybody looked at it as, ‘Oh, Paul went off to do Paul,’ but that’s not what happened.”

Brickell also defended Simon's character, saying, “Paul has a way of looking at everyday life and making it poetic, and he doesn’t put on a caricature in order to express himself. But that also makes him vulnerable. I think it sometimes has made him misunderstood.”

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