Luke Bryan and his wife, Caroline have been married for more than 15 years and have five children together, three of which were adopted after a family tragedy. The road to their lasting marriage wasn’t always easy for the college sweethearts, which included a breakup that lasted several years.
During an interview with Bobby Bones on the Bobbycast, Caroline shared how she met Luke, the surprising way that Luke proposed, and her advice for a long-lasting marriage.
When Caroline Boyer started college at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia, she didn’t realize that she would be meeting her future husband right away.
“My first week in college I met Luke,” says Caroline. “I walk into a bar with my friends and I keep seeing across the bar, just these white teeth.”
Luke told HuffPost, “We met [at Georgia Southern] back in fall 1998. At a little bar called Dingus Magee’s in Statesboro, Georgia. We dated in college and then we broke up for like five-and-a-half years and got back together… and we’ve been depending on each other ever since.”
Caroline thought Luke was adorable but didn’t think much else about it at first. Luke nervously sent over a friend to say hello before he introduced himself. The future Mrs. Bryan said they were “friends” for two weeks before they began dating.
At the time, Luke was a senior who had already started his music career. “He would go on Fridays and Saturdays to other colleges and he would go sing and he’d play show,” Caroline told Bobby Bones. “So that’s all I ever knew with him.”
After about a year of dating, their relationship came to a screeching halt. Caroline revealed what Luke said that changed everything. “He was talking about marriage and I freaked out… I said, well, we have to break up.”
Caroline wasn’t ready for the commitment, so they went their separate ways. They ended on good terms, with Caroline telling people, “He was the greatest guy that I would ever date.” They stayed in touch and she would still go to see Luke’s shows. “This is pre-text, this is pre-Facebook, Instagram. So there was no texting when I was in college and we kept in touch sporadically through email. And then he was always in touch with my brother also. So we kept in touch. If he had a show in town, I would always go, which is kind of messed up. But we would always say hey and hug, but then we’d go our separate ways.”
One night, everything changed. Caroline was working as a pharmaceutical rep, often traveling for weeks at a time. “One night I was working in a town and I go to a bar, did not have a clue, but Luke was playing and we locked eyes and that’s been it ever since. So it’s like everything changed within two minutes.”
They hit one more speed bump before rekindling their relationship. Luke left the stage early that night, leaving Caroline to believe that he didn’t want to see her. She left the show upset, but Luke called her at 2 a.m. to ask her why she’d left. Once they’d cleared up the confusion, they were back together.
“We kinda saw each other and talked a little bit and then started emailing back and forth a little bit,” Luke told HuffPost. “And she was like, ‘Hey, you want to come to my family’s Christmas party?’ I went to the party and the rest is history.”
When the topic of marriage came up again, Caroline was ready… but she wasn’t prepared for how Luke proposed. “I’d been gone two weeks working in Indiana. I came home and he came outside the house and he had shaved, which, you know, Luke shaving doesn’t happen much. …and he had dressed up. I thought he just missed me. And he had made this CD of our favorite songs in college. And then he told me he was taking me somewhere to eat. And then he put a blindfold on me, which I thought I knew something was up then.”
During an interview with Michael J, Luke shared the rest of the story. “We [had] kind of been talking about houses and stuff and I told her I had a house I wanted her to see. So, that’s what she thought she’s gonna do,” he told Michael J. “When she took the blindfold off, I was down on one knee.”
Caroline Boyer and Luke Bryan tied the knot on December 8, 2006 in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by a small group of about 25 friends and family.
Luke and Caroline had two children together, Thomas Boyer (“Bo”) Bryan and Tatum (“Tate”) Christopher Bryan, before they expanded their clan by three unexpectedly. They adopted Luke’s two nieces, Jordan and Kris, and his nephew, Til, after his brother-in-law Ben passed away in 2014. The three kids had lost their mother, Luke’s sister Kelly, unexpectedly seven years earlier, so Ben’s death left them without both parents. “We never thought twice about it,” Caroline told Country Living. “You know, it was never something that he and I had to sit down and talk about, you know, should we take this on? We just did it.”
After enduring so much, how has the couple kept their marriage together for more than 15 years? Caroline told Bobby Bones, “Talk, talk, talk. Don’t don’t ever not tell each other how you’re feeling. And there is no secret as long as both people are in and putting it in work, but always talk.”
