Ardmore's Benj Pasek and collaborator Justin Paul nominated for Tonys

A Tony Award nomination is a big deal, especially when you're part of a young songwriting duo who are really in it for the fun.

Ardmore native Benj Pasek, 27, and his songwriting partner, Justin Paul, 28, who have been called "the heirs of Rodgers and Hammerstein" by Vanity Fair, have a formula, and clearly it's working - well enough to have earned them invitations to Sunday night's Tony Award ceremonies as nominees for best original score for A Christmas Story: The Musical.

Says Pasek, "We're just trying to write musicals, and we're really happy that people are enjoying it." Says Paul, "We do love the history of songwriting teams in the past, and our hope is definitely to emulate those careers, or pay homage to those who came before us."

Of the Tony nomination - they're up against Matilda, Kinky Boots, and Hands on a Hardbody - they've said, "We're like the young guys who got into the party maybe by accident."

But they're no showbiz innocents: They've already racked up the theatrical song cycle Edges, which has been produced hundreds of times all over the world; Dogfight, which just won the Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding Off-Broadway musical, and a number of hit songs for NBC's let's-put-on-a-show series, Smash, as well as extensive children's theater work, and music for the Disney Channel.

All this stems from a relationship Pasek says is more than best-friendship. "We sort of treat each other like brothers," laughing a lot, fighting a lot, yet sustaining their close working partnership for an astounding, given their youth, 10 years.

You could say the guys were born for this.

Pasek's mother, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of developmental psychology at Temple University, is part of a quartet called Kamotion, which has produced five albums of music for kids based very much on the lives of Pasek and his two brothers. Topics include such events as the first bath and the first step.

"I remember all of the moments in my life kind of becoming musicalized," Pasek said in a phone interview, adding that early Disney classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin then introduced him to the world of musicals. As a preteen, he was a member of the Philadelphia Boys Choir; in high school, Friends Central, he was involved with the Philly Songwriters Project.

He says some of his high school teachers taught a less-traditional, riskier kind of musical theater and "really opened my mind up at a really young age. I love Philly, and I'm so proud to be from there. Philadelphia supports the arts in such a beautiful way."

After graduating in 2003, he went off to the University of Michigan as a musical theater major. Even before classes began, he met Paul, another musical theater major, from Westport, Conn. Paul too came from a musical family - "in a funny way": His father is a pastor, and both his parents grew up playing the piano and singing in church. Though not theatrical or on a professional level, this family affinity set the stage for his future.

"I just loved music and singing so much," Paul said by phone. Add to that the "whole other element of storytelling that was really fascinating to me," and he was ready-made for musicals starting in fourth grade, when he won the title role in Oliver!. (It's been downhill ever since, he jokes.)

During their sophomore year at Michigan, they were cast in the "two leastdesirable roles" in a production of City of Angels - Man With Camera and Asian Back-up Dancer.

They were so embarrassed their mothers were coming all the way from the East Coast to see them perform they decided to do something to offset the ignominy. According to Pasek, the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney-esque thought was, "Why don't we, like, write a whole show?"

They'd been working on some songs but had nothing substantial enough to build an entire production on. So they booked a hall and invited everyone they knew - leaving themselves no choice but to sit down, write a show, and make it good.

They were launched.

While at Michigan, the two had made a list of movies they thought would be fantastic to set to music. They looked for films that had a central character with a really big want or desire to which they could then add a sense of fantasy and imagination.

Cut to 2012's A Christmas Story: The Musical, based on the Jean Shepherd-narrated 1983 film in which 9-year-old Ralphie pursues a Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun with the relentless passion of a knight after the Grail. In one of the show's most poignant songs, Ralphie rhapsodizes about how getting the BB gun for Christmas would transform his life. Talk about a big want.

"It's unbelievable," said Pasek, describing the magic of "seeing something you came up with in your head coming to life."

Pasek and Paul are two guys who set out to become actors and singers but along the way discovered they loved writing songs even more than performing them.

"I think for us, it was sort of being OK with following where our paths took us, and not stuck with thinking we had to be set on one specific path," Paul says.

So, how does it feel to be nominated for a Tony Award when you're so young? "Really, really, really amazing," says Paul, and really unexpected, too. "This world of artists, of theater, of creators, of inventors . . . it's a world that we've admired from afar," and to be "let in a little bit to that world, that feels really special."

Pasek concurs: "The fact that we got to be a part of it was unbelievable and something that honestly took our breath away."

On Sunday, Pasek's Tony date will be his mother. That day already is special for both: On June 9, 1985, she gave birth to him.

So, a happy birthday Tony? Maybe, maybe not. They're plenty happy already.

"We're just two guys who just like writing songs together," Pasek says. "That might sound cheesy in a way, but we're just really, really happy that people like what we're writing."

And, he says, they'd still be writing songs even if nobody noticed.