From fan club president to Mrs. Benedetto, Susan Crow knew firsthand what it felt like to dance cheek to cheek with Tony Bennett.
The 20-time Grammy winner died July 21 at the age of 96. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2016 and by his side throughout was during his battle with the disease was Crow, his wife since 2007 and primary caretaker in the final years of his life.
But their love story began in an usual way 50 years before they married, when Bennett was introduced to Crow's parents while her mother was pregnant with his future wife. And when they did finally meet at one of his concerts 20 years later, Crow was serving as the leader of one of Bennett's fan clubs. They may say you should never meet your heroes, but, in Bennet and Crow's case, it led to one of Hollywood's sweetest love stories.
Look back on Bennett and Crow's touching love story:
You could say legendary singer Tony Bennett met his wife Susan Crow before she was even born. In his 2016 memoir Just Getting Started, Bennett revealed that Crow's mother, Marion Crow, took a photo with him after she attended one of his concerts in 1966.
"As fate would have it, Marion was pregnant at the time with…Susan!" Bennett wrote. "It's a photo we all laugh about, knowing the incredible turn of events that followed."
Bennett and Crow, 40 years his junior, crossed paths for the first time when she was 19 and met him backstage following a show. Just like her mother, Crow was a massive admirer and was the president of Bennett's fan club in San Francisco. (One could say he found his heart there.)
"It tickled me that someone of her age was so devoted to my music," Bennett wrote in his autobiography. "I not only agreed to say hello to her backstage but asked her to be my date for the evening, and that's how it all really began, foreshadowed by a backstage photo taken in 1966!"
Bennett and Benedetto were together for more than 20 years before they exchanged vows in a civil ceremony in New York City in 2007. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and his wife Matilda served as witnesses at the intimate event, which Bennett and Benedetto celebrated with a honeymoon in Italy.
"We just decided to do it," Crow told People after the wedding. "It was just one of those things. The fact that we could just do it on our own the way we wanted to be was perfect."
A graduate of Fordham University and Columbia University's Teachers College, Crow was a social studies teacher at a public high school in New York City.
In addition to her career as an educator, Crow also owned a talent firm, Creative Artists Management.
In 1999, the couple founded Exploring the Arts, a non-profit organization that supports arts education through more than 50 school partnerships in New York and Los Angeles.
"I happen to be one of those lucky people who can honestly say that dreams do come true. Being able to work with my husband, Tony Bennett, has been one such dream," Crow wrote in a 2013 op-ed for The Huffington Post. "Together we founded a nonprofit organization, Exploring the Arts (ETA), to transform the lives of young people through arts education."
Bennett and Crow also opened the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in 2001—named after one of Bennett's close friends—in his hometown of Queens, N.Y., where Crow served as a social studies teacher and assistant principal.
During an interview with AARP magazine in 2021, Crow and Bennett's son Danny confirmed that the singer had been privately battling Alzheimer's for several years.
Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer's," Bennet tweeted at the time. "Thank you to Susan and my family for their support, and @AARP The Magazine for telling my story."
Crow became Bennett's full-time caregiver and worked with Danny to assist Tony's living, including regulating his diet and exercise schedule to slow down the progression of memory loss.
"I have my moments and it gets very difficult," Crow said in the interview. "It's no fun arguing with someone who doesn't understand you. But I feel badly talking about it because we are so much more fortunate than so many people with this diagnosis."