Theirs is one of the enduring — and endearing — love stories in Marin County rock. Singer-songwriters Monroe and April Grisman celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in April, no small feat for a business notoriously tough on relationships. “Unbelievable,” she says and giggles.

“It’s amazing that we’ve loved each other as much as we do for this long.” As they talked about their long marriage and their lives in music, the Grismans sat across from one another in the spacious Novato studio where she gives vocal lessons and he rehearses with his band, Petty Theft, the popular Tom Petty tribute group. For most of their marriage, they operated under the assumption that the secret to staying together was avoiding too much togetherness.

Over the decades, he was in his bands and she was in hers. Although both are prolific songwriters, they had never written songs together. “I don’t know why, but I always wanted to keep our careers separate,” she says.

“We’re both musicians doing our own thing. Just like when we played softball — I’m on this team and you’re on that one.” That all changed with the pandemic, when they suddenly found themselves dealing with a kind of forced togetherness.

“In 30 years, we had never written any music together,” he says. “But during that period when we were stuck at home and there were no gigs, what are you going to do? We needed an outlet.” Once they put their heads together musically, the result astounded them b.