Songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly met through producer Keith Olsen in 1981, and it quickly became clear that the two had very complementary songwriting strengths.

“Billy was way stronger lyrically and I’m much stronger musically. So rather than me struggling to finish a lyric and rather than him writing a simplistic rock and roll song, we started working together,” Kelly recalled Monday (Feb. 16) afternoon, shortly after Steinberg died of cancer at the age of 75.

The Grammy-winning lyricist left behind songs that defined the ‘80s and ‘90s, including a string of No. 1 tunes written with Kelly, such as Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” and Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors.”

They delighted in how well they worked together.  “In the early days, we would just kind of laugh and look at each other, like, ‘Did you hear that? What did we just do?” Kelly recalls.  “It was just like a chemical reaction. You put something in a test tube, and it bubbles over. He and I really made magic together.”

Kelly recalls that Steinberg “would sit with a legal pad and his little fountain pen and just stare at that page and I’d watch his brain grinding. He just was great with words and catch phrases. He just was born to do it. He just had a gift.”

They had a legion of other hits, among them, Pretenders’ “I’ll Stand by You,” the Bangles’ “In Your Room,” Lauper’s “I Drove All Night” and the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself.” Taylor Dayne, Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, Bette Midler, Cheap Trick, Belinda Carlisle and many other artists also recorded their songs.

Steinberg and Kelly, who signed to Epic Records as a duo under the name I-10, began getting their songs recorded in the early ‘80. “We had had some luck writing good songs and placing some songs, but we hadn’t had any big hit records,” Kelly recalls.

That all changed when Madonna cut “Like a Virgin,” a song inspired by Steinberg falling in love again after a bad breakup. The pair, who were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011, scored their first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the Madonna song in 1984 and quickly followed with four more No. 1 songs over five years. More than 40 years later, “Like a Virgin” remains Madonna’s biggest hit, spending six weeks at No. 1.

Steinberg usually wrote the lyrics first but then stayed with Kelly as he wrote the music.  “Billy couldn’t stand to be in another room. He always wanted to be right there, which was fine. He was a good sounding board,” Kelly says. “I wrote almost all the music, but he threw in his two cents on what he liked and what he didn’t. Billy was obsessed with making music and making songs more than I am. He was the workaholic, and probably good for my work ethic.”

Kelly last saw Steinberg only a few days before his death. “I had a great visit with him,” he says. “It was perfect.”

On Monday afternoon, Kelly revisited the pair’s five No. 1s for Billboard and recalled the story of how he and his friend created each one.  

The interview was edited for clarity and length.