ça lui fait 66 ans quand même !

Age dispute
There is a long-standing dispute regarding Dio's age. His most likely birth year is 1942. Dio himself has said in the past that he was born July 10, 1949 and, at other times, outright refused to give the year of his birth. The general consensus is that the 1942 date is probably correct, due to the following:

The United States Library of Congress copyright searches for both Ronnie James Dio and Ronald James Padavona material both return listings invariably citing the 1942 birthdate.

He was in his first band in 1958, which means that if the 1949 date were correct, he would have been 9 years old. This would be unlikely, but not impossible. (Dio has also said that he started his first group around age 10). According to classmates from his high school, and reportedly also a yearbook, which is available in the reference section of the Cortland City Library show a Ronald James Padavona graduated from Cortland High School in 1960. He would have graduated high school a few days before his 11th birthday if he was born in 1949. He was also his senior class president and was voted most popular. His first band photos, with "Ronnie and the Red Caps" from ca. 1960 or 1961, are also widely circulated on the Internet. In the photo, he looks to be somewhere in his mid teens, and probably older than the 12 years old he would have been, if the 1949 birth date were correct.

British-born/Australian-based singer Graham Bonnet, who replaced Dio in Rainbow, has said that Ronnie is younger than he. Bonnet was born September 23, 1947. However, in a 2005 interview, while discussing guitarist and former bandmate, Ritchie Blackmore, Dio said that Ritchie "isn't that much younger" than him. Blackmore was born in 1945. Online public records searches (done in 2005) list Dio as 64 years old under the name "Ronald Padavona" and as 57 years old under the name "Ronnie James Dio". Another search shows a "Ronald and Wendy Padavona" in Studio City, CA (presumably a business address), ages 64 and 58 (as of February, 2006), which would fit with the assumed birth years of 1942 and 1947 for Dio and his wife, Wendy. This also suggests that Dio's legal name is still Ronald Padavona. Interestingly, Blackmore has said that Ronnie is younger than him at other times, although this could easily be attributed to Dio's maintaining a false birth date that Blackmore (and others who know Dio) assumed was correct. In an article on Black Sabbath in an issue of Circus magazine ("Black Sabbath Pray For Brighter Days") in the spring of 1982, Dio's age is listed as 33. This would seem to support a birth date of 1948, since the interview appeared before Dio's July birthday. Again, if Dio had been giving an incorrect date of birth for years, it's not out of the question that this number is also wrong.

As a result, most of Dio's fans agree that the 1942 date is the most likely the correct one. The 1949 date is second most likely. 1944 is another possible date, and 1947, 1940, 1939, and even 1937, but there is no real evidence to back these dates up. The age of Ronnie and his son also builds the case for 1942, although a 20 year age difference was not that rare in the 1960s. In one interview, Dio was very emphatic about the 1949 year, saying, "Well, I was born in '49, and I never told anybody anything other than that." It is assumed that he may have taken on the alias Ronnie James Dio at this time, and that his real date of birth was, in fact, in 1942.

In 2004 Dio was elected to the Cortland City School Hall of Fame. The plaque shows his graduation year was in fact 1960. http://www.cortlandschools.org/alumni/w ... tation.swf