Who Is Sandra Grant Bennett? The Story of Tony Bennett’s Second Wife

Sandra Grant Bennett is best known as the second wife of Tony Bennett, one of the most loved American singers of the twentieth century. She was an aspiring actress when they met on a film set in 1965, and she went on to share the hardest years of his life, raising their two daughters while his career, health and finances fell apart and slowly recovered.

Her story is often told in one short line in lists of tony bennett marriages, between his first wife Patricia Beech and his third wife Susan Crow. But her chapter was not short at all. It covered more than four decades, from a film set romance in the 1960s to a divorce that was only finalized in 2007. This is her story in full, based on the public record.

Quick Facts

Early Life and Acting Dreams

Public information about Sandra Grant’s early life is limited, which is common for people who became known through a famous partner rather than through a long public career of their own. Biographical listings give her birth year as 1940 and describe her as an American actress who was working to build a screen career in the 1960s.

She was part of the busy world of young performers in Los Angeles at that time, taking roles where she could find them and looking for a break. One credit often linked to her name from that period is the 1964 drama A House Is Not a Home. Her filmography in reliable sources is small, and many long lists of television roles repeated on low quality biography sites cannot be confirmed in stronger sources, so they are not treated as fact here.

What is well documented is the job that changed her life. In 1965 she was connected with the film The Oscar, a Hollywood drama in which Tony Bennett had an acting role as the character Hymie Kelly. Bennett was a singer who only acted from time to time, and this film set meeting would matter far more to both of them than the film itself.

Meeting Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett in 1965 was famous, successful and unhappily married. Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Queens, New York, in 1926, he had scored his first big hit with Because of You in 1951 and had recorded his signature song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, in 1962. His voice made him a star, but his work kept him on the road for long stretches, and that strain had damaged his first marriage.

Bennett had married Patricia Beech, an Ohio art student and jazz fan, on February 12, 1952. They had two sons, Danny, also called D’Andrea, and Dae, also called Daegal. By 1965 the couple had separated. That same year, while filming The Oscar, Bennett became involved with Sandra Grant. Some accounts also describe them meeting around a pool party at the Beverly Hills Hotel during the same period. Either way, the film production in 1965 is the meeting point every serious account agrees on.

The pair began living together and stayed together through a long and complicated period. Bennett’s divorce from Patricia Beech, who had sued for divorce on grounds of adultery in 1969, only became final in 1971. By then Sandra had already given birth to their first daughter, Joanna, in 1970.

Marriage and Two Daughters

On December 29, 1971, Sandra Grant and Tony Bennett married quietly in New York. It was the second marriage for both of them. There was no large celebrity wedding. After the long legal delay of his first divorce, the couple simply made their family official.

Their second daughter, Antonia Bennett, was born on April 7, 1974. The family moved to Los Angeles, and for a time their life looked like a classic entertainment world success story: a famous singer, a home in Hollywood, and two young daughters.

The two girls grew up in very different directions. Joanna Bennett kept a largely private life and stayed away from a public performing career. Antonia Bennett followed her father into music. She studied at the Berklee College of Music, became a jazz and cabaret singer, performed in clubs, casinos and concert halls around the world, and often opened shows for her father on tour. Of Sandra’s two daughters, Antonia is the one the public knows, and her warm relationship with her father was visible on stage for many years.

The Hard Years Behind the Fame

The 1970s were the lowest period of Tony Bennett’s life, and Sandra lived through all of it at close range. Popular music had changed, his style was out of fashion, and his own record label, Improv, folded. The family fell behind on taxes, and the tax authorities moved toward taking their home. Bennett’s mother died during the same troubled stretch. He fell into depression and into serious drug use, including cocaine, and he suffered a near fatal overdose at the end of the decade.

It was his sons from his first marriage, Danny and Dae, both then in their twenties, who stepped in to rescue his career and finances. Danny took over as his manager and slowly rebuilt everything with a simple plan: keep the great songs, dress well, and introduce the older singer to younger audiences. That plan later produced one of the most famous comebacks in music. But the comeback belonged to the next chapter of Bennett’s life, not to his marriage with Sandra.

The marriage itself did not survive the hard years. Accounts differ slightly on dates, with the separation most often placed in 1979 and some reference works listing the marriage as lasting until 1983. The honest summary is that the marriage ended as a living relationship around the turn of the 1980s, after roughly a decade together as husband and wife and a longer relationship before that. Bennett moved back to New York and rebuilt his life there.

A Divorce That Took Decades

The strangest part of Sandra Grant Bennett’s story is what happened after the separation: almost nothing, legally, for more than 25 years. The couple never completed their divorce. In a 2007 interview with Page Six, Sandra explained it in plain words. Her side was supposed to file the papers, she said, and they simply did not, and it went on and on.

The divorce was finally completed in 2007, only weeks before Bennett, then 80, married his longtime partner Susan Crow in a private civil ceremony in New York on June 21, 2007. News of the wedding surprised many fans, who had assumed the second marriage had legally ended decades earlier.

In that same 2007 interview, Sandra, then in her sixties and living in Nevada, spoke openly about the marriage. She said she was thankful the divorce papers were finally done. She also said that the Tony she knew was not the same smiling public figure the world knew, a remark that pointed back to the addiction and money troubles of the 1970s. She shared that she was writing an autobiography about her life, and she mentioned her earlier connection with baseball great Joe DiMaggio, whom she had known before and during those years, saying her life might have taken a very different path. These were her own words about her own life, given once, and she has largely stayed out of public view since then.

Her Place Among Tony Bennett’s Marriages

To place Sandra in the full picture of tony bennett marriages, the timeline helps. His first marriage, to Patricia Beech from 1952 to 1971, gave him his two sons and ended under the pressure of constant touring. His second marriage, to Sandra Grant from 1971 until their separation around 1979 to 1983, gave him his two daughters and covered his darkest professional and personal years. His third marriage, to former schoolteacher Susan Crow in 2007, lasted for the rest of his life. Together they founded the charity Exploring the Arts and the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens.

Bennett died at his home in Manhattan on July 21, 2023, at age 96, after living with Alzheimer’s disease in his final years. He was survived by all four of his children. In interviews a year after his death, Antonia and Joanna both spoke about grief and about how life in their father’s neighborhood in New York kept his memory close. Sandra, by then long out of the public eye, made no public statements, which fits the private way she has lived since the marriage ended.

Judged fairly, Sandra Grant Bennett was not a footnote. She was the partner who stood in the house during the tax fights, the failed label, the addiction and the near fatal overdose, and she raised the singer’s two daughters through all of it. The smiling comeback years came later, with other people. The hard years were hers.

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FAQs

When did Sandra Grant marry Tony Bennett?

They married on December 29, 1971, in New York, after living together for several years. Their first daughter, Joanna, had been born in 1970. They married in the same year Bennett’s divorce from his first wife became final.

How many children did Sandra Grant Bennett have?

She had two daughters with Tony Bennett: Joanna Bennett, born in 1970, and Antonia Bennett, born on April 7, 1974. Antonia became a jazz and cabaret singer who often performed with her father.

Why did their divorce take so long?

They separated around 1979 but never filed the final papers. Sandra said in 2007 that her side was supposed to file and simply did not. The divorce was only finalized in 2007, shortly before Bennett married Susan Crow.

Where is Sandra Grant Bennett now?

She has lived a private life since the marriage ended. In her last widely reported interview in 2007 she was living in Nevada and writing an autobiography. No regular public updates about her life have appeared since then.

Final Thoughts

Sandra Grant Bennett’s story shows the side of fame that never reaches the stage. She met a star on a film set, built a family with him, and then watched money, health and career problems close in from every side. She stayed through the worst of it, raised two daughters, and then stepped away into a quiet life.

Her long unfinished divorce became a small piece of music trivia, but the real story is longer and more human than that. Behind one of the greatest comebacks in American music stands a difficult decade, and Sandra Grant Bennett lived that decade from the inside.

Featured photo: Tony Bennett – photo by Tom Beetz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons