“Despite their seemingly different worlds, a surprising number of Hollywood and country stars have fallen in love. ”, — write: www.dailymail.co.uk
Most recently, Bedazzled bombshell Elizabeth Hurley, 59, and country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus, 63, went public with their romance on Easter Sunday, sharing a steamy social media post.
Though the British actress and her ‘hillbilly’ lover might appear to have little in common on the surface, the pair have reportedly ‘bonded over life experiences’ as they’ve ‘both been through a lot in life.’
They’re not the only unusual Hollywood-Country pair. Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, 57, found love with Blue Ain’t Your Color hitmaker Keith Urban, 57, five years after her marriage to Hollywood leading man Tom Cruise, 62, fell apart.
Meanwhile the unexpected pairing of California born Gwen Stefani, 55, and Oklahoma’s down-to-earth country star Blake Shelton, 48, shocked fans when they began dating in 2015.
As Elizabeth and Billy’s unusual romance unfolds, Dailymail.com delves into Hollywood’s history of surprising country love stories.
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
Nicole and country music star Keith first met in 2005 at a G’Day USA gala in LA before announcing their engagement in May 2006.
The couple tied the knot the following month at the Cardinal Cerretti Chapel in the grounds of St Patrick’s College in Manly, Sydney.
A-list guests including Hugh Jackman and his now ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness, along with Naomi Watts and director Baz Luhrmann, were in attendance.
Nicole’s two adopted children, Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, who she shares with ex-husband Tom, acted as bridesmaid and usher.
Nicole also shares daughters Sunday Rose, 15, and Faith Margaret, 13, with Keith.
The couple celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary in July and Nicole revealed the unique relationship rule that helps them to keep the romance alive.
‘We never text each other, can you believe that? We started out that way – I was like, ‘If you want to get a hold of me, call me,” she told the Something To Talk About podcast on Sunday.
‘I wasn’t really a texter. I think he tried texting me a few times and I never texted back. Then it was like, this is quite nice.
‘If you really want to get a hold of me, you have to call me. Everyone else we text with. That’s just the one thing we don’t do.’
Last year Nicole offered a rare insight into her family life as she gushed over her husband.
The actress sweetly told how she is ‘so lucky’ to have met the singer 19 years ago as she reflected on their romance.
‘I’m so lucky that I have Keith who’s just my love, my deep, deep love,’ she told People magazine, adding that it ‘gives me the ability to go and do whatever I have to do because I know where I can come back,’ she added.
‘I remember talking to somebody once and they were like, ‘What do you do?’ I’m like, ‘Well, primarily I have my family, I raise my kids, and I work,’ Nicole recalled.
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton
Gwen and Blake met on The Voice in 2015 while they were both going through divorces – Gwen from Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale and Blake from country singer Miranda Lambert.
Last year Gwen revealed she almost ended her romance with Shelton in the early days of their relationship.
‘We had just met, and it was chaos. Both of our lives were in complete turmoil, all over the ground. Nothing could save us at that point,’ Stefani told People.
‘There was a point where I was like, “I can’t even talk to you. This is insane. I already have enough problems. This is not happening anymore. We’re not going to text or nothing.”‘
Stefani pushed past the pain and the couple married in 2021 and appear to be blissfully happy together, if the lyrics to her new country album Bouquet are any indication.
Music is how Blake, 48, eventually convinced the No Doubt singer to give him a chance.
‘I think he really wanted to impress me, because he doesn’t really write songs as much as he used to,’ she continued.
‘And I love writing songs. That’s everything to me. If I want to feel like I have any kind of purpose or any kind of value or anything, it’s about writing a song. That’s where I get my fulfillment,’ she said.
The song Shelton wrote at the time turned out to be Go Ahead and Break My Heart, a country song he and Gwen did a duet on and released in 2016.
Previously, she called Shelton ‘a miracle,’ as she reflected on how her divorce from Rossdale – with whom she shares three sons – shattered her childhood dreams.
During the course of her 13 year marriage to Rossdale, they welcomed sons Kingston, 18, Zuma, 16, and Apollo, 10.
‘Something that I wanted since I was a little girl is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies,’ she explained.
‘That dream was completely ruined; it was crushed, and I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream, and God putting Blake in my life was just that miracle.’
As one of the trailblazers of the alt-rock pop punk scene in the 1990s, ending up with one of the biggest country music stars of the eras isn’t as odd as it seems on the surface.
‘We come from such different worlds. Our musical tastes are different, yet we do come together in this one place: We both love ’70s soft rock and yacht rock,’ she said.
Sharon Stone and Dwight Yoakam
Basic Instinct bombshell Sharon Stone raised eyebrows when she began dating country crooner Dwight Yoakam in 1992.
They met while shooting a 1992 Ebel watch ad.
Stone, 67, was a major Hollywood name at the time, famous for roles in Total Recall and Basic Instinct and having starred alongside A-listers like Michael Douglas and Woody Allen.
Meanwhile, Yoakam, 68, had already earned a Country Album of the Year award in 1986 for Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc. and a Grammy in 1988 for Hillbilly Deluxe.
He’d become a Nashville sensation in the ’80s, known for covering everyone from Elvis to Queen and collaborating with icons like Buck Owens.
His 1985 Honky Tonk Man video was a groundbreaking moment, marking the first time a country music video aired on MTV.
In 1992, the country star was Stone’s date to the 1992 Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California.
While Sharon wowed in a black gown, Dwight rocked his signature cowboy hat to the glitzy event.
However, the unlikely pair called things off shortly after.
Post-split, she famously likened kissing him to ‘eating a dirt sandwich.’
Meanwhile Yoakam went on to date a few other actresses, including Single White Female star Bridget Fonda.
Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett
In 1993, the marriage of Hollywood royalty Julia Roberts to country’s Lyle Lovett marked a unique union.
The Pretty Woman star met Lovett on the set of The Player and, after just a few weeks of dating, they married in Marion, Indiana.
After their wedding, Lovett played a show in front of 10,000 fans, and at one point brought Roberts onstage, declaring, ‘Welcome to the happiest day of my life.’
While the rom-com queen and the singer made an unusual duo, fans were also fascinated by Lovett’s mop top hair.
Barbara Walters once famously asked Roberts during a 1993 interview, ‘Do you like your husband’s hair?’
Roberts replied, ‘I do like his hair,’ stating that it was ‘not as big as everyone makes it out to be. It’s pretty normal.’
Julia and Lyle’s union fell apart just 21 months later, with the pair divorcing in March 1995.
In 2002, Julia married her current husband, cameraman Danny Moder, 56.
They share twins, Hazel and Phinnaeus, born in 2004, and teenage son Henry, born in 2007.
Renée Zellweger and Kenny Chesney
Bridget Jones star Renée Zellweger tied the knot with She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy singer Kenny Chesney in May 2005.
But four months later, they got an annulment; she cited fraud as the reason for their split.
The reason kicked off a storm of speculation that Kenny was gay, something which he fiercely denied.
She came out with a statement at the time that ‘fraud’ is ‘simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny’s character,’ via The Hollywood Reporter.
Two years after their split, he told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes: ‘I didn’t want to draw any more attention to it. I didn’t have to prove to anybody that I wasn’t [gay]. I didn’t feel like I really did.’
Later, the country singer spoke to People about being married and how he couldn’t ‘commit’ to that.
He had said: ‘I have friends who have a normal family, kids and a dog, and I think I would blow my brains out. It’s fine for them. But I’m such a free spirit, I feel more alive when I’ve got somewhere to go. I can’t stay on my boat for a few weeks if I have a guitar and a girl and a Bob Marley CD. After that, I’ve got to move around.’
At the time he told Playboy that he ‘didn’t have any clue as to what true marriage meant,’ adding that he was committed to his music and didn’t know how to commit to a second thing – which was marriage, via Today show.
When the magazine asked him about the fraud reason she listed caused rumors that he was gay to circulate, he said:’That is the most unbelievable thing in the world. “Because Renee cited fraud, Kenny’s got to be gay.” What guy who loves girls wouldn’t be angry about that s**t?’
He added: ‘I didn’t sign up for that. I think people need to live their lives the way they want to, but I’m pretty confident in the fact that I love girls. I’ve got a long line of girls who could testify that I am not gay.’
Jewel and Sean Penn
Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn had a brief romance with country darling Jewel in 1995.
The actor, 64, later directed Jewel’s, 50, hit video, You Were Meant for Me.
Jewel detailed their short-lived relationship in her book, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, in 2015.
The two met the same year she released her debut album Pieces of You.
‘One day my dad came to find me, saying, “Jewel, you must be getting some kooky fans out there in the Lower 48. Some guy just prank-called and said he was Sean Penn,”‘ she recalled in her book.
Penn finally managed to get the singer on the phone.
‘The voice was unmistakably Sean Penn’s,’ she wrote, adding, ‘He had seen me on Conan and was working on a movie he’d written called The Crossing Guard. He wanted me to compose a song for it. I told him I would and he said he would meet me anywhere to screen the movie, I could name the day. I gave him my cell number and figured I would never hear from him again.’
However they did end up meeting, with Jewel describing Penn as ‘charming, witty, and bright’ as well as a ‘fantastic flirt.’
The pair kept their romance mostly under wraps while they were dating.
Jewel wrote about telling Penn how she ‘liked his mind’ and that he replied it ‘would be impossible not to fall in love with me.’
The romance didn’t stand the test of time.
Jewel went on to marry cowboy Ty Murray in 2008 and give birth to their son Kase in 2011. The couple went on to divorce in 2014.
Penn married actress Robin Wright, 59, in 1996, and went on to have two children, Dylan and Hopper. The pair divorced in 2010.
Kristin Cavallari and Morgan Wallen
The Hills star Kristin Cavallari, 38, shocked fans last year when she revealed she had a fling with country rebel Morgan Wallen, 31.
The reality TV star revealed on Bunnie XO’s Dumb Blonde podcast that the Cowgirls singer ‘made a great f*** buddy.’
‘Quite honestly, I was like, “I kind of just want a f*** buddy in Nashville,’ Cavallari said at the time.
Cavallari — who announced her divorce from Jay Cutler in 2020 — clarified in that same conversation that Wallen was in no way ‘romantic’ during their time together.
Still, the jewelry designer described the country crooner as a ‘great guy’ and ‘true gentleman’ with a ‘big heart.’
‘Morgan‘s a good guy. He has a big heart. He really does,’ she told host Bunnie XO, wife of country signer Jelly Roll.
‘He’s a playa from the Himalayas,’ Bunnie quipped of the womanizer. ‘The amount of women that have sat on my couch that have been with Morgan Wallen is crazy.’
Kristin responded, ‘He’s been with every woman on the planet. As he should!’
The Hills alum also opened up about how the You Proof singer went out of his way to ‘handle business,’ planning their first date down to the location and pickup time.
And Morgan also got them a ‘private room’ to make the evening even more special.
Kristin recalled, ‘Morgan, he’s very sweet. The first date that we went on, he was a true gentleman.’
‘And he was like, “I’ll pick you up. I’ll pick the place.” Just f**king handled business.
‘He came and picked me up. He met my kids. My kids were so excited. It was so cute,’ she said noting that her kids are big fans of Wallen’s music.
‘He got us a private room, he had his bodyguard…dropped me off. He kissed me in the rain and it was like the sweetest thing.
‘And then we hung out thereafter, and it was up and down too…it was a lot,’ she added.
Then, Kristin admitted the she had not spoken to the Billboard Music Award winner since ‘last year’ and claims there is no bad blood between them.
However, she was confused as to why he wasn’t as consumed by her affection as her previously flings had been.
‘I’ll be honest with you. Morgan was the first guy in my entire f***ing life that wasn’t like, just completely enamored with me.’
‘And I was like, what in the f*** is going on? It really threw me!’ she explained.
‘I love having the upper hand. And I feel like with him, I didn’t have the upper hand. Only time in my life. So it really f***ed with me.’
To which Bunnie promptly responded, ‘Well, it’s probably because he has 20 other girlfriends.’
Taylor Swift and John Mayer
Singer John Mayer reportedly dated Taylor Swift, who began her career firmly rooted in country music, from December 2009 through February 2010, when he was 31 and she was 19 – with the breakup being far from amicable.
‘Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?’ Taylor — who is now happily dating NFL star Travis Kelce — sang in her hit Dear John, rumored to be about Mayer. ‘The girl in the dress, cried the whole way home – I should’ve known.’
She goes on: ‘Well, maybe it’s me and my blind optimism to blame – or maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love then take it away.’
Taylor blisteringly continues: ‘And you’ll add my name to your long list of traitors who don’t understand, and I’ll look back and regret how I ignored when they said: “Run as fast as you can.”‘
Meanwhile John previously spoke out about his 2013 song Paper Doll, which is thought to be a rebuttal to Dear John.
During his John Mayer Solo live show in April, John discussed Paper Doll, telling the audience: ‘I wonder if people don’t like it because it sounds a little pi**ed off. I don’t like “pi**ed off’ as a song. I think it was more hurt,’ via Yahoo.
Carrie Underwood and Chace Crawford
Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford dated Before He Cheats hitmaker Carrie Underwood from 2007 until 2008.
The two reportedly broke up by text.
‘It was completely mutual,’ Underwood previously told Extra.
‘It’s like, “Peace out.”‘
However, Crawford’s sister Candice told People he took the split harder.
‘He was upset about the breakup. It’s always hard when you lose a relationship.’
Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry
After meeting at the Academy if Country Music Awards in May of 2023, popular podcaster Brianna Chickenfry and country superstar Zach began a relationship two months after – making a high-profile debut together on the red carpet at the 2024 Grammys.
However, tables turned in October of 2024 when the 28-year-old country star announced in a lengthy statement to Instagram that the pair have parted ways after more than one year together.
Bryan posted to his account: ‘Addressing something: Brianna and me have broken up with eachother (sic) and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her.’
‘I’ve had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go out different ways. I am not perfect and never will be,’ he continued in his statement.
‘Please respect Brianna’s privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too.’
‘With everything I am and to anyone I let down, I am sorry. I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself.’
Just over 30 minutes after his statement, Chickenfry alluded to the break-up with her own message stating she was going to be taking a social media break after feeling ‘really blindsided.’
‘Hey guys I’m feeling really blindsided right now. Gonna hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately, when I’m ready I’ll be back and ready to talk,’ she said.
‘I love you guys so much thank you for all of your kind words. Remember you are so loved and everything’s always gonna be OK.’
Shortly after the statements, the drama-filled feud began to take flight on social media, as Chickenfry admitted Zach announced the split prior to telling her he was going to share the break-up post.
The breakup only began to get messier in November, when the Barstool Sports podcaster claimed Bryan had launched objects at her face, as she was upset that the he posted an image of a pet they once shared to social media.
Chickenfry also claimed that Bryan had subjected her to ‘narcissistic, emotional’ abuse throughout their relationship, and alleged he offered her $12 million to sign an NDA.
In a post from last year, the influencer also revealed that Bryan had picked out an engagement ring for her while he was ‘was cheating the whole time.’
Zach has since moved on with Australian girlfriend Hannah Duncan.