NEW YORK (AP) — Adele Zerilli Springsteen, the longtime legal secretary, musical muse and concert dance partner who captured countless hearts in her son Bruce Springsteen 's E Street Nation and beyond, has died at 98. Bruce Springsteen announced in an Instagram post that his mother died Wednesday. She was “real smart, real strong, real creative,” with a “refusal to be disheartened,” Bruce told biographer Dave Marsh. Her life had an incredible consistency, work, work, work every day, and I admired that greatly," he told "Uncut" magazine in 2002, praising her “noble” juggling of work and home. E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt tweeted Thursday that Adele Springsteen was the “Matriarch of our family and an unrelenting source of inspiring positive energy.

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