Where Are Tom Petty’s Kids Now?
Tom Petty married before he was famous and shared two kids with his first wife, Jane Benyo. He became a stepfather in his second marriage to Dana York. His three children have grown up, so what do they do now?
Tom Petty had three kids
Petty had two daughters, Adria and Annakim, with Benyo. Following their divorce, he married York and became the stepfather to her son, Dylan. He said that he was never as laid back as his public image made him seem, and he wanted to pass down his passion to his children.
“I have a very blessed life,” he told Parade in 2010. “I think any time you’re making a living at what you love to do, you’re blessed. That’s what I try to instill in my kids. Go after what you really love and find a way to make that work for you, and then you’ll be a happy person.”
Still, he said they often poked fun at him because of the difference between his public and private personalities.
“My kids have this huge laugh about me. I just spent some time with them, and they were laughing about my image,” Petty said in the book Conversations With Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. “They said, ‘The world pictures you as this laid-back, laconic kind of person, and actually you’re the most intense, neurotic person we’ve ever met.'”
What do Tom Petty’s kids do now?
Petty’s eldest daughter Adria followed her father into the entertainment industry, but she works in film. She is a director, editor, and artist who has worked on visual campaigns for a number of musicians, including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Coldplay. She has also worked on ad campaigns, documentaries, and music videos.
Petty’s younger daughter, Annakim, has largely remained out of the public eye, though she continues to use her social media accounts to share pictures of her late father. Similarly, his stepson Dylan has kept his personal life private, but he has used his social media accounts to tribute Petty.
His daughter helped create a documentary about him
In 2021, Adria Petty worked on the documentary Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free: The Making of Wildflowers. The film follows Petty as he recorded his solo album Wildflowers. Adria valued the fact that the film showed viewers the side of her father that she knew well.
“The film gives you this deeper ability to feel who Tom really was,” she told Vulture. “For me, it’s just like, That’s my dad. That’s really my dad. That’s not capital T, capital P. I used to always joke, ‘When my dad was on the road, he was TOM PETTY. Then he’d come home and he’d be dad or Tommy.’ He would calm down and stop yelling at everybody to get him stuff. He was sort of like two different people, but the guy in the studio was the normal guy. He wasn’t a rock star. He was very comfortable and very much like the same person he would be in a layman’s life. You really see him the way that I see him as a person.”
