The Bangles' Vicki Peterson & John Cowsill on Finally Working Together & the Secret to Their 22-Year Marriage (Exclusive) (2024)

Vicki Peterson and John Cowsill are relationship goals.

The couple —who performed at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame on Friday, Aug. 9 —opened up to PEOPLE about making music together for the first time in their 22 years of marriage, the secret to a successful relationship and their "retirement package tour."

With more than two decades of marriage under their belt, Peterson, who was a founding member of the 1980s girl group The Bangles, and Cowsill, who played with his family band The Cowsills and The Beach Boys, spent plenty of time apart as they toured with their perspective bands. But two years ago, they finally decided to try making music together.

"She's been a professional, and I've been a professional, and we walk around the house like gunslingers. Like, 'Well, you go first.' But we don't say anything about it," Cowsill, 68, tells PEOPLE. "We're very domestic. It's about laundry, cooking, hiking, building things in my shop, gardening."

"And really then like, 'Hey, I got a gig. I got to go. I'll be back in a couple of weeks,'" he adds. "We were just so weird with each other."

Since then, the couple has been working on their first-ever record — which is a "love letter" to Cowsill's two late brothers — and they plan to release it sometime next year.

Working together meant they had to "change" their relationship because they're "both really controlling," Peterson, 66, says.

"No, I'm the right one and you're the wrong one!" Cowsill jokes.

Peterson, who also played with the Continental Drifters and the Pyscho Sisters, adds, "He wanted to have tons of input. I've been in bands my whole life, so the art of being in communion with someone and working through something and collaborating, I maybe knew a little bit more about. It's just different when it's your life mate so it was a learning curve for us both."

These days, the couple is living in a studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York, and they've leaned in to the local music scene by playing venues with roughly 60 people in the audience. They couldn't be happier.

"We talk to everybody, sign whatever they want, and then go home and count our pennies. We have fun. I call it The S---s and Giggles Tour," Cowsill says, joking that he's in his "extended warranty years": "It's our retirement package tour, and we're just going to do this until we're done, until nobody wants to hear us."

"We're just starting," Peterson adds. "Fast-forward 40 years, you're still going to be learning stuff. Every day we feel like, well, we're new at this."

That's how the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame gig came about. One day, they were walking around Stony Brook, Long Island, and stumbled across the building. They walked in and received a warm welcome from Barry Fisch, who's a member of the Board of Directors. They became friends and eventually got asked to play a show.

Though they've spent so much of their marriage apart, Peterson and Cowsill attribute their happy marriage to one thing: friendship.

"Since we got to New York, we've been here for two years, we get along fabulously in this little one-room place. So that says volumes," Cowsill says, adding that couples "have to have some base, man. Getting somebody's jokes is the best thing."

Peterson adds, "Respect is important too."

Reflecting on their life together, Cowsill and Peterson are grateful they can still perform and don't have "old people voices yet."

"Sometimes it happens to people. And all of a sudden like, 'Wow, they used to be great. They can't sing anymore.' Well, I think we're still in the 'we can still sing' club," Cowsill says. "We're fortunate. Everybody around us is loving. We have loving friends and family. There's some bad mojo stuff out there, but I think all the good prevails. It shines brighter than the dark stuff."

"We actually do have a song called 'Find the Good' from one of our other bands called The Action Skulls," Peterson continues. "I love the theory of that. I love the spirit of that. Because there is a lot of darkness out there, but there's a lot of beauty. I mean, the beauty is everywhere. So look for the beauty."

"The world is a balancing act," Cowsill concludes. "What do you want to balance it with?"