In terms of country music’s power couples, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are among the most powerful. Married for more than a decade and friends for more than 30 years, the two country icons prove that love really does stand the test of time.
Brooks and Yearwood’s love story is one that was a long time in the making: The two artists knew each other for almost two decades before finally tying the knot on Dec. 10, 2005.
Brooks and Yearwood originally met in 1987, during a demo recording session, when they were both still struggling musicians and both married (Brooks to his college sweetheart Sandy Mahl and Yearwood to musician Chris Latham). Even though the two didn’t start dating until the early 2000s, Brooks says that he knew he was meant to be with Yearwood from the very beginning.
“It’s strange because I felt that feeling like when you just meet your wife, but I’d been married for 13 months,” Brooks said of his and Yearwood’s first meeting in a 2013 interview on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. “We started seeing each other after the divorce and we came off tour. We’d known each other music-wise, but we got to see each other as people … I gotta tell ya, I never knew it could be like this. I never knew that, every day, you could wake up and feel like this.”
Brooks and Yearwood got engaged in 2005, in front of 7,000 fans, at a country music venue in Bakersfield, Calif. The event was for an unveiling of a bronze statue of Brooks; conveniently, the statue had a wedding band on its left hand. Of course, Yearwood said yes, and the country couple married later that year.
Brooks affectionately calls Yearwood “The Queen,” and it’s clear that he is smitten with his wife — and Yearwood seems to share the sentiment. She doesn’t even like to be apart from her husband for too long!
“We made the conscious choice, when we got married, to not be apart, so we tour together, we try to go everywhere together, and we really don’t spend that much time apart, and we actually enjoy each other’s company!” Yearwood tells Kelly Ripa. “He’s the nicest, most romantic guy. If you don’t know Garth, or if you ever just interacted with him, you think, ‘Nobody’s that nice,’ but he really is that nice.”
In Brooks and Yearwood’s case, the couple who plays together — music, that is — stays together. Throughout their over 30-year friendship, relationship and marriage, the two have toured together and performed at the CMA Awards and other events together; in 2016, they released their first album together, a collection of holiday-themed duets entitled Christmas Together.
Flip through the photo gallery below to see some of the sweetest moments from throughout Brooks and Yearwood’s life together.
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