She was Madam Marie.
For three-quarters of a century, off and on, she held court on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, in a little bunker decorated with a giant eye -- the Temple of Knowledge -- telling fortunes, delighting rubes and famous alike, reading the tarot and gazing into a crystal ball.
She was there at the resort's heyday and when it hit the skids.
One day, she told the fortune of a skinny kid with big dreams. His name was Bruce Springsteen. He put her in a song and Madam Marie became rock and roll legend.
Marie Castello, of Oakhurst, who claimed to have told the fortunes of everyone from Judy Garland to Ray Charles to the Rolling Stones, has died. She was 93.
There were some who said she couldn't have been the same person who set up shop in the depths of the Depression just down the boardwalk from Convention Hall. Not true, her family said.
"We help out from time to time, but there was always only one Madam Marie," said her granddaughter Sabrina Castello, who is carrying on the family clairvoyance business.
Everybody also said she was a gypsy, but she was actually born in Neptune City, of an Irish father and a Canadian mother. As a young mystic, Madam Marie had green eyes and blonde hair and dressed in a white Egyptian-style tunic trimmed in gold.
The gypsy label stuck anyway and Madam Marie never contradicted it. Mystery was good for business.
Just last month, Madam Marie -- hands swollen with arthritis and dressed in polyester rather than a toga -- talked about the good old days with an Asbury Park Press columnist.
She still wouldn't say what she told Judy Garland, but she wasn't above dropping some names of former clients. Elton John, Gorilla Monsoon, Diane Keaton, Perry Como, Woody Allen, Elliot Gould, Vic Damone and Diahann Carroll.
Of course they discussed Springsteen, but they didn't have to. The story has been told and retold on websites and in books.
He was 17, living on his own, a little lonely and a little shabby. It was his folk-singing phase and he sat with his guitar on the railing across from the Temple of Knowledge. He didn't have enough money for a reading, so she gave him a freebie.
He'd be famous, she said, and meet many girls.
In his 1973 song, "4th of July, Asbury Park, (Sandy)," Springsteen wrote: "Did you hear, the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do."
For decades, a pilgrimage to Asbury Park wasn't complete for Bruce fans without a stop at Madam Marie's. She finally retired in 1998 -- to spend time with her four children, 14 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren -- but she returned to the boardwalk in 2004 as the Shore town was coming back to life.
On a personal note: I would have probably never met my wife, Sandy, if it wasn't for the Springsteen song "Forth of July Asbury Park". It was that song that made Madam Maire famous.
