Tom Petty Revealed the ‘Mystical’ Start to His Second Marriage
According to Tom Petty, one of the most mystical things that ever happened to him had nothing to do with his music career. While he admitted that some parts of his music career felt cosmically divined, he believed that meeting his second wife, Dana York, was one of the most mystical occurrences in his life. At the time, Petty was dealing with a divorce from his wife of many years. York provided some shelter from that.
The Heartbreakers singer had a hard time recovering from his divorce
After over 20 years of marriage, Petty and his first wife, Jane Benyo, divorced. The couple met in Gainesville, marrying just before Petty moved to California to pursue music. Their marriage had been tumultuous in the years before their split. Petty moved out of their home and into what he described as a “rundown shack” as they were separating.
“I was living in a pretty rundown shack. I didn’t mind it,” he told Rolling Stone in 2006. “It was in a part of the Pacific Palisades, in the woods. And I was living back there and had chickens and all kinds of s***. In some places, you could actually see the daylight coming through the walls of the cabin. But it was my bachelor pad, you know.”
Tom Petty said that meeting his second wife was one of the most ‘mystical’ things that happened to him
Petty met York in the early 1990s, when both of them were in other marriages. He said that after seeing her face in the crowd at a concert, he dreamt about her that night. The next night, York and her husband introduced themselves to Petty, and he said the recognition “zapped my brain.” When she introduced herself as Dana, all he could think to say was, “Of course you are.”
They continued to run into each other over the years until a Johnny Cash show when both of them were divorced.
“I got her number at that Cash show,” Petty said in the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “And I was calling her, and finally convinced her to come back to LA, on a weekend when she didn’t have her son, Dylan. I thought she was the most beautiful, wonderful thing in the world. And we started, you know, we started seeing each other. And really, I was so deep in trouble because of my family life falling apart … she was kind of my release from that.”
Petty explained that meeting her felt mystical.
“My wife is a calming force in my life,” he told Harp in 2006, per The Petty Archives. “Meeting her was one of the most mystical things that ever happened to me.”
Tom Petty also had a mystical moment with band members
Petty also had a mystical connection with his Traveling Wilbury bandmates. Before they formed a band, Petty kept running into them in a way that felt “cosmic.”
“My little coupling with Jeff [Lynne] and George [Harrison] was so cosmic. It was so damn strange when I ran into Jeff. I didn’t live in that neighborhood when I left on tour, and neither did Jeff. He moved into it when I was gone. We had spent almost every night together along with George [Harrison] when I was in England a few weeks before so I didn’t expect to see him stopped at a light in Los Angeles. We pulled over and talked, and decided to meet the next day. But that’s not nearly as odd as when I was Christmas shopping with my daughter about a week later and we decided to eat at this French restaurant that she loved for lunch — something we never ever did.”
There, Petty ran into Harrison and Lynne again. Just as Harrison was getting Petty’s number from Lynne, they realized he was in the restaurant as well. From there, they all became good friends and, later, bandmates.
