There was an immediate connection between Tim McGraw and Faith Hill when they first met at the New Faces showcase during the 1994 Country Radio Seminar. They could both feel it, but they were both seeing other people at the time so nothing came of it.
Fast forward to 1996, their paths crossed once again when Hill landed an opening slot of McGraw’s Spontaneous Combustion Tour. McGraw had recently broken off his engagement to Kristine Donahue and Hill was engaged to music producer Scott Hendricks. While the timing still wasn’t ideal, neither singer could deny the connection between them. McGraw took it upon himself to make a move. One night after a show, he invited Hill to his dressing room.
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“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” McGraw recalled in an interview with People. “I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell. I thought she was way out of my league.”
“It was definitely cat and mouse, very high school,” Hill added about the early stages of their relationship. “My singers are going, ‘He’s walking in the hall, go go go.’”
When she entered the room, McGraw said he “planted a big old kiss on her. It wasn’t a huge lip lock.”
“I was shocked, but it was nice,” Hill admitted.
That’s when she knew she had to break it off with Hendricks.
“It obviously wasn’t a rock-solid situation or it wouldn’t have ended,” she explained. “There wouldn’t have been someone else who could walk into my life. Tim is not the reason I left.”
The pair wasted no time moving forward with their relationship. They got engaged backstage at a music festival in the summer of 1996 and were married on October 6, 1996.
The singers are one of country music’s most successful couples. So what’s the secret to their long-lasting relationship?
“I think, for us, being as normal as possible and raising our family and being in a family situation as much as possible…Certainly it’s different because of what we both do, but we try to keep it as much of a family environment that we can,” McGraw told E! Online. “And most of the time…we try to make that the priority and the primary time that we spend. For us, we leave the front doors when we go to work, but when we’re home, we don’t talk about none of the music that much…It’s a whole different world.”
McGraw and Hill have three daughters; Gracie Katherine (1997), Maggie Elizabeth (1998) and Audrey Caroline (2001).
