Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are country music's favorite couple thanks to lessons learned from his first marriage
Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are more than just country music's favorite couple. Theirs is a love story spread over nearly three decades.
Even though they met in the 80s and felt an instant connection to each other, Brooks and Yearwood didn't start dating till the early 2000s because, at the time they met, they were both married to different people.
Brooks married his college sweetheart Sandy Mahl a full 13 months before he met Yearwood and even after he met the woman who would go on to be his second wife, he chose not to end the first marriage.
Mahl and Brooks stayed together for 15 years and had three children but their relationship became strained after Brooks' career exploded, as she revealed in the new A&E documentary 'Garth Brooks: The Road I'm On'.
"Life totally changed overnight," Mahl said in the documentary. "It was just... everything was on fire. Everything he touched was on fire."
"Running constantly... a whirlwind," is how Mahl described those years. "People constantly wanting your attention and yanking and pulling on him."
"He'd be gone eight, maybe 10 weeks at a time and if he'd come home there'd be number 1 parties or shows or CMAs, ACMs, American Music Awards. So it was constantly going but we both grew apart, really, really quickly," she shared.
It's a very common story with celebrities, especially musicians, who spend a lot of their time on the road and end up missing out on time with the family.
After Brooks and Mahl got divorced in 2001, it wasn't very long before Brooks began dating Yearwood and in 2005, he proposed to her on-stage in front of more than 7,000 screaming fans at the Legends In Bronze concert and dedication at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace.
Now, they've been married for over a decade and Yearwood believes the success of their relationship is largely because they have made conscious efforts to spend as much time together as possible.
"We do date nights, but, honestly, we are apart maybe five days a year," Yearwood told Us Weekly in a 2019 interview. "We really have made a conscious effort since getting married to not be apart, so we've toured together."
"If I'm doing something, he'll be with me, even if you don't see him, he'll be in the hotel or around. And we're not always together, but we've been married before, and we decided we don't want to be apart. So [we said] let's make an effort to make sure that's our priority and we've been able to do it," she shared.
It's like Brooks says in the documentary, "Everything that is a blessing, is also a curse." Though his first marriage may have ended, by learning from the mistakes he made, Brooks managed to avoid a similar failure and in the process, he and Yearwood have created a love story that's better than fiction.
The full story of Brooks and Yearwood's relationship will be revealed in Part 2 of 'Garth Brooks: The Road I'm On' airing on A&E on December 3.