When this happened to me, there was some sort of fusible link in one of the wires coming off the starter. I replaced that and everything was fine. Maybe banging on the starter wiggles that link and makes a connection, and now it is completely fried. Just tell your wife she broke it by banging on the starter too much.
I went with a remote starter also, but I also got a GM high torque mini starter - have to wait for it to wind down if it doesn't start the first time, but lots of cranking power for my 454.