Maren Morris and husband Ryan Hurd's love story: After-work beers and 'writing chemistry' drew couple together
The real-life love story of country music artists Maren Morris and Ryan Hurd has all the makings of a great country album.
Music, in particular, has played a significant role in their relationship. According to The Boot, the pair met as songwriters at a recording session in Nashville in 2013 where they wrote 'Last Turn Home,' long before Morris was topping charts with hits like 'My Church' and 'The Bones.' Here's what you need to know about their romantic meet-cute and subsequent love story.
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A song on their own life
Maren Larae Morris met fellow country singer Ryan Hurd in a co-write in 2013. The Michigan native, who has penned hits for the best in the business, including Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley and Tim McGraw, said to People that he loves writing songs for other people. The song 'Last Turn Home' was the first time he collaborated with Morris. But sparks wouldn't start flying till the next collaboration 'Love In a Bar' that proved fateful for their relationship.
Hurd said that his song, 'Love In a Bar,' is a tale fraught with poetic license about the journey he took to falling in love with Morris. “[‘Love In a Bar’] is very much an autobiographical song about my relationship with Maren,” Hurd said to the magazine.
“I met Maren writing songs and I met her when I was starting to have success. We wrote ‘Last Turn Home,’ that Tim McGraw recorded and we would write and then after we’d go over to a bar in midtown and have a couple of beers. That’s when we started making a real connection, beyond a creative partnership," he added.
“The imagery in ‘Love In a Bar’ — the cigarettes and a Corona — those are vivid pictures in my head and I’m giving the listener a version of that in their head. It’s such an expression sonically. That’s who I was at 28 years old and that’s the thing my heart was chasing and the thing my music was gravitating toward," he went on to say.
'Doing' each other's careers
The couple, who in December last celebrated their five-year anniversary, has proven to be more than just romantic partners. They inspire each other as they follow their dreams of becoming famous country musicians.
“There’s really nothing that can replace someone who knows what you’re going through,” Hurd said of Morris’ impact on his career. He added that to be supportive and know the difficulties surrounding the making of an album and putting one's "whole self into it", is something else entirely.
"We have really difficult calendars and if one of us wasn’t supportive, it would be really easy to give up on that… This is a hard thing to do and it’s not glamorous. Every time I want to quit, she tells me how close I am. She does my career with me and I do mine with her. In chasing my career, I feel like it’s part hers," he said.
Engagement and marriage
The duo got engaged in July 2017. She announced the event by showing her unique uncut diamond ring in a series of images she shared on Instagram. In one, she's holding a Corona Light and putting her hand on Hurd's leg, a reference to the lyrics of Hurd's song 'Love In a Bar'. Another image depicts the pair looking into each other's eyes. Morris captioned the pictures with a simple “Yes,” and added an engagement ring emoji.
“We had been friends for only a couple of years, but there was always this writing chemistry in the room, and eventually, the timing of it was undeniable. We had such a foundation built off writing so many songs over the years that we were like, ‘Why are we avoiding this?’ ” Morris said, in a report by People.
The two were married on March 24, 2018, at The Cordelle in Nashville, Tennessee, the same city where they met first. Morris wore a custom-made dress by Cavanagh Baker of Nashville, which was short in the front and long in the back. The couture embroidered lace was sourced from Spain and the crystal straps of the dress were handmade in India.
The gown, which was a homage to Morris' mother's vintage dress, took over a month to design and execute. The couple had a child, a baby boy, Hayes Andrew Hurd, in March 2020.
