He might have ditched us for Nashville some time ago, but Australia still adores Keith Urban, our biggest country music export.
Not only is he super-talented and very successful in the country music industry, his loving marriage to Nicole Kidman has had a hold on our hearts for the 17 years they’ve been together.
Together, the pair are raising two teenage daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, and split their time in different locations, depending on their various projects.
Keith admits that meeting and eventually marrying Nicole was a turning point in his life, claiming that beforehand he had been ‘bad at relationships’.
“Intimacy’s so hard for me and I get stuck, but I don’t want to be want to be like my father was, scared to rock the boat, never speaking up. I want to live my truths wide open,” he previously told Variety.
“It took marrying Nic to learn all about that, learn about how to really communicate properly and speak and say things,” he went on.
“I could write a good love song, but I was terrible at relationships, because I didn’t really know.”
Although he might have been ‘bad’ at them, Keith did have a few relationships before he met the love of his life in Nicole.
Angie Marquis
Angie was Keith’s first real girlfriend, with the pair dating in the 1980s after meeting as kids.
Angie revealed in a documentary that the romance began when she saw him playing guitar when they were both 10 years old.
“Keith actually called a meeting one night in his parents’ car, and he said, ‘I want to put a band together, and I want you in it’,” she recalled.
“I think we were about 13 or 14 and started gigging in pubs around town,” she said.
“Her and her sister and me and my brother would sit outside and play Leif Garrett songs ‘til the wee hours, just whatever was on the charts at the time,” Keith said of the time.
“I really struck up a friendship with that family, especially Angie.”
While Keith and Angie didn’t last long-term, they did remain friends, with Angie attending Keith’s 2006 wedding to Nicole.
Angie now lives a quiet life in Queensland, but has said in the past she might tell more of her story with Keith.
“Maybe one day I’ll write a book about it,” she told New Idea in 2017.
Niki Taylor
Keith had a long-term relationship with model Niki Taylor shortly before Nicole came into his life.
The pair dated from 2002 to 2004 and even lived together in Tennessee.
Niki came to Tennessee with her twin boys in 2001 after suffering a major car accident, that had her wanting to change direction in life. She met Keith not too long after, and the pair began to share a home, moving in together in the town of Franklin.
They shared matching tattoos that read amor vincit omnia, which is Latin for ‘love conquers all’, and Niki even appeared in the music video for Keith’s song Somebody Like You.
However, the pair weren’t meant to be, and called it quits in 2004.
“His career got really busy, I got really busy, and we never saw each other,” was the simple explanation offered by Niki.
The fact that Keith’s life was extremely busy at the time is understandable, given just how much success he has seen in his career. The soloist has won four Grammy Awards and countless Academy of Country Music Awards as well.
It seems Keith would be suited to someone with an equally busy lifestyle, and luckily, that’s what he found.
Nicole Kidman
Keith met Nicole in LA in 2005 when they both attended ‘G’Day LA’, a Hollywood event that promotes Australia. They began dating six months later, and married one year on, in June of 2006.
Unlike most celebrity marriages, theirs has stood the test of time, with the pair still completely enamoured with each other after all these years.
“I wish I could have met him much earlier and had way more kids with him, but I didn’t,” Nicole told Vogue.
“I think we were two lonely people,” she also revealed to Vanity Fair of the beginning of their relationship.
“I would probably say that two very lonely people managed to meet at a time when they could open themselves to each other. We were a mixture of frightened and brave.”
And as for how they keep their spark alive?
“Sugar and spice is the key to 15 years [of marriage],” Nicole said coyly on The Project.
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