All About Lana Del Rey’s Parents, Robert Grant and Patricia Hill

Lana Del Rey’s music is known for its glamorous, otherwordly quality, but the singer had a fairly normal upbringing.

Born Elizabeth Grant in 1986, her parents, dad Robert Grant and mom Patricia Hill, moved their family from New York City to Lake Placid, New York, when she was a year old. They left their advertising jobs and settled into small-town life, eventually welcoming two more children.

While Robert and Patricia had traditional career expectations for their daughter, her talent was undeniable from childhood, and they are proud of her success.

“Despite all of that resistance out there, she persevered and kept making music. She stuck straight to her own unique aesthetic,” Robert told PEOPLE in 2023. “She’s finally being recognized for the extraordinary songwriter that she is. She’s really a poet — and then couple that with that angelic voice.”

After collaborating on a track from Del Rey’s 2021 album Blue Banisters, Robert embarked on his own music career and released his debut album, Lost at Sea, in 2023.

Here’s everything to know about Lana Del Rey’s parents, Robert Grant and Patricia Hill.

They got married in 1982 and have three children

Robert and Patricia met while working at Grey Advertising in New York City. Per The New York Times, they got married on June 13, 1982, at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church in Patricia’s hometown of Ridgewood, New Jersey.

In 1986, they welcomed their first child, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, now known as Lana Del Rey. Their second daughter, Caroline Grant, was born in 1989, and their son, Charlie Hill-Grant, was born in 1993.

Caroline, who goes by the nickname “Chuck,” is now an established photographer and has photographed her famous sister numerous times. She is also credited as a co-writer on Del Rey’s song “Sweet Carolina” from her eighth studio album Blue Banisters.

Charlie has also been involved in his sister’s projects. In 2020, he shot a home video of Del Rey for the release of her Interview magazine cover.

They worked in advertising in New York City

Robert and Patricia met as coworkers at Grey Advertising in New York City, where they worked as a copywriter and assistant account executive, respectively.

Previously, Robert studied at Prescott College in Arizona, and Patricia graduated from Bradford College in Massachusetts and Syracuse University in New York.

They moved their growing family to Lake Placid, New York

When Del Rey was a year old, Robert and Patricia left their advertising careers and moved from New York City to Lake Placid, New York. There, Robert started his own furniture company and worked in real estate, before becoming a successful investor in web domains. Patricia, meanwhile, worked as a teacher.

Growing up, the singer was not satisfied with the slow, quiet lifestyle of upstate New York and yearned to return to the city.

“It was really, really quiet,” she said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014. “I was always waiting to get back to New York City. School was hard. The traditional educational system was not really working for me.”

They sent Del Rey to boarding school as a troubled teen

At age 14 or 15, Del Rey started drinking alcohol and hanging out with older kids at school, which concerned her parents.

“In small towns, you sort of grow up fast because there isn’t that much to do,” she told Rolling Stone in 2014. “So you’re out with everybody else who’s already graduated, and that’s totally normal. But it just didn’t sit well with everyone in my family.”

She continued, “I was misdirecting my energy. I started going out all the time and skipping school a little bit and yeah, I got in trouble.” At the time, Del Rey attended the same school at which her mother worked.

Del Rey’s drinking led her to “lose” her family’s car, she told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014, which she said was the last straw for her parents. Robert and Patricia decided to send her to Kent, a private boarding school in Connecticut where her uncle was an admissions officer.

At Kent, she became close with a young teacher who introduced her to great authors.

“I was lonely,” she told the Herald. “I had this teacher who was my only friend in school. His name was Gene. He read us Leaves of Grass and we read Lolita in class, and it changed my world, which was a really solitary world. I didn’t have a connection to anyone in class and when I found these writers, I knew they were my people.”

They saw Del Rey’s musical talent at an early age

In a 2023 interview with Inman, Robert said he could tell Del Rey had musical talent “from the time she could walk.”

“She was singing before she could walk,” he recalled. “She was literally like a little songbird and she had a beautiful voice, even back then. And you could tell she was fascinated with music. And then, throughout elementary school, she would be in all of the plays and the musicals, and then in junior high, in high school, so it was always there.”

Robert also noted that while talent doesn’t necessarily lead to success, Del Rey had an innate ambition that drove her to stardom.

“I have a lot of dads who come up to me, and they’ve got very talented daughters, and they always say to me, ‘What’s the secret?’ ” he said. “And I say, there really isn’t a secret. It’s whether or not that child has this extraordinary ambition to succeed, against all odds, and I do mean all. And that’s Lana Del Rey.

They had traditional career expectations for Del Rey

Despite Del Rey’s obvious talent, her parents didn’t expect her to pursue music. The singer said that because of her troubled teen years, Robert and Patricia had traditional career expectations for her that were “geared toward keeping me safe.”

“Most of my musical world was kept under wraps,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014. “I don’t want to say it was a frivolous prospect, but we have nurses in the family, and teachers, and that was more of a reliable profession.”

Del Rey herself said she didn’t even expect to have a life of stardom.

“By the time I was about 15, I knew I was probably going to stay there and have a life there,” she said of her hometown in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone. “I mean, I had a vision for myself, definitely, at that point. I didn’t see myself becoming a singer or anything. I just wanted to grow up and get married and have fun. Have my own life, my own place.”

Robert has collaborated with Del Rey — and has his own music career

In June 2023, Robert released his debut album, Lost at Sea. The 14-track project contains piano music with almost no vocals (aside from a few contributions from Del Rey) and is inspired by his childhood on the shores of Rhode Island.

“When I play the piano, I’ll often drift off into almost a hypnotic state,” Robert told PEOPLE at the time of the album’s release. “I can remember and envision many, many times when I was out on the ocean, and it all flows through me right into the music.”

Robert became interested in music as a teenager and taught himself piano. During his advertising days, he wrote a few country songs with his cousin and friend, country songwriter Phil Madeira. The pair pitched one of their songs to a publishing company on Music Row in Nashville, but were ultimately rejected.

Years later, when Del Rey was working on her 2021 album Blue Banisters, Robert became inspired to create music again. While he was improvising a song on piano, Del Rey overheard him and started composing lyrics.

“She began to sing lyrics to the song, and within 30 or 40 minutes, we had written ‘Sweet Carolina,’ the final track,” he told PEOPLE.

Robert said he and his daughter have written a total of “four or five beautiful songs” together, including a song called “Sunshine” that didn’t make the final cut of Del Rey’s 2023 album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

Robert doesn’t mind being called a “nepo daddy”

Following the news of Robert’s album in February 2023, fans quickly coined him “Nepo Daddy,” a play on the buzzy “nepo baby” phenomenon.

Despite the negative connotation associated with “nepo babies,” Robert fully embraced the title.

“I thought, ‘Oh, s—, that’s fabulous. I’ve got to go get that domain.’ I want to do merch. I want to create a brand around this thing,” he told PEOPLE. “I leaned right into it, embraced it and really loved it. Then, of course, it blew up. Now, I’m the Nepo Daddy, and that’s fine. They call me a lot of things — Robster, Daddy Del Rey, Papa Del Rey, Robster Lobster and now, Nepo Daddy.”

Kesha’s mom, singer-songwriter Pebe Sebert, joined the conversation on X (formerly Twitter), jokingly writing, “Is he single.”

“God bless her. Of course, I’m married. I have a wife, so we want to make that clear, but I thank her for her support,” Robert said.