Born to a family in Michigan, Parker began her career as an actress and model, spending four years in Rome, Italy.
[2] She began dating Gaudio in 1973 while his band, The Four Seasons, was signed to Motown Records, where she was employed.
Parker and Gaudio began their songwriting collaboration with the LP Who Loves You.
[4] (According to the Four Seasons biopic Jersey Boys, where this encounter is fictionalized as a Christmas party in Chicago, Nick Massi introduced Gaudio to Parker, though she is not mentioned again until Gaudio mentions having a wife in his closing monologue.
[6] Gaudio and Parker continued writing songs together for subsequent Four Seasons and Frankie Valli albums into the early 1980s; they would marry in 1981.