Trudy Monk was born in Los Angeles in 1962 to Dwight and Marcia Ellison. In Adrian's words, Trudy "enjoyed poetry, was often barefoot, and kept every promise she ever made". Adrian offers a glimpse into her mindset (in "Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan") by turning Warrick Tennyson's morphine back on after he had turned it off, claiming Trudy would have wanted him to. She attended the Ashton Preparatory School and graduated valedictorian in 1977, at the age of 15. She did not date very much while there, expecting to know who the right man would be once she found him. Trudy and Adrian met during his senior year at UC Berkeley (episode "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion"). They married on August 8, 1990. In 1993, Trudy was involved in a lawsuit with the financier Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck because she referred to him as the "Genghis Khan of World Finance". Dale was unable to win the lawsuit, but the Monks were forced to sell their house paying for their lawyer. Adrian harbors an intense hatred for Dale because of the pain he caused Trudy, saying that he stole a year of her life. Dale remains an important adversary of Adrian's, especially when he was revealed to have been hiding information about Trudy's death.