Patrick grew up in
Harlem and started playing the piano at the age of eight and immediately fell in love with it. At the age of ten, she began to accompany her sister, who played violin and by the time she was twelve, she was accompanying local singers and orchestras. In 1929, aged 16, she graduated from the Martin Smith Conservatory of Music and was awarded a gold medal for having passed her piano and theory classes with honors. Patrick married in 1933 and became a piano teacher and taught for 50 years. She continued accompanying singers and orchestras. She also played the organ and conducted the choir of a
Presbyterian church in the
Bronx. At one point, she directed a choir that sang with
Duke Ellington and his orchestra, a highpoint in her life. "I felt elated to work with him," she told ''
McCall's magazine. In January 1982, she had a stroke that left her disabled on her right side and unable to speak. After months in the hospital, she returned to her home in Englewood, New Jersey, able to speak a little bit, but unable to move her right hand enough to play the piano. A local reporter dubbed them Ebony and Ivory'' and the name stuck. They began to play in other senior citizen facilities, at veterans' homes and hospitals. They were on television both in the US and abroad and appeared with
Regis Philbin,
Geraldo Rivera and
David Hartman.
Liberace, who was a fan of "Ebony and Ivory", made his last television appearance on the
Hour Magazine with
Gary Collins and made it a condition of his appearance that if they would bring Patrick and Eisenberg on the program, he would come. Newsman
Morry Alter won an award for his CBS News report on them. They were featured on
PM Magazine,
CNN and
NBC Nightly News, with
Tom Brokaw. Patrick and Eisenberg's story was included in a book by
Norman Vincent Peale and in
More True Stories, an
ESL reader in its third edition. It is included in sermons and religious publications in the US and other countries. == Partial list of television and radio appearances ==