What to know about Garth Brooks wife, country star Trisha Yearwood

Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood have been married nearly two decades, but they’ve known each other even longer.

The two met way back in 1987 and worked together over the years before they started dating in the early aughts, tying the knot in 2005.

The couple often posts on social media together about their love and they’ll celebrate 19 years of marriage this December.

Get to know more about Trisha Yearwood and her relationship with Garth Brooks.

Garth Brooks was married before Trisha Yearwood

Yearwood is Brooks’ second wife. He was previously married to songwriter Sandy Mahl from 1986 to 2001. Brooks and Mahl share three adult daughters: Taylor (born 1992), August (born 1994), and Allie (born 1996).

How did Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood get together?

In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Brooks said he met Yearwood in 1987 when he was still married to Mahl. The two were introduced by a mutual friend, musician Kent Blazy.

“Do you really want to get into this?” Brooks said to DeGeneres, laughing. He said when Blazy asked him what he thought of Yearwood, he felt confused.

“I said, ‘Well, it’s strange because I felt that feeling like when you just met your wife?’ But I’d been married (to Mahl) for 13 months,” he said.

Brooks and Yearwood would initially have a professional relationship, he said in the interview with DeGeneres. The two collaborated over the years, and won a Grammy in 1998 for their song “In Another’s Eyes.”

But Brooks said they didn’t start dating until after his divorce from Mahl.

“Being married, it’s gotta be right, this is who you went to college with. And you were married in front of god and your family and everything and you keep hacking and you work, and you work and you work, and then comes that time where you’re looking at the rest of your life wondering, how do I want to live it?” he told DeGeneres, emphasizing that he and Yearwood started dating “after the divorce. “

“This was somebody that I always enjoyed being around and we had a lot more in common than I ever dreamed we did,” he said. “She’s the real deal and I’m very lucky.”

Brooks proposed in May 2005 onstage at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, California, according to The Bakersfield Californian. They tied the knot later that year surrounded by family at home in Oklahoma, the Associated Press reported at the time.

The two have spent the nearly two decades since then collaborating together as musicians and media personalities.

The two most recently appeared in a six-episode docuseries, “Friends in Low Places” that shows them building “the honky-tonk of their dreams in the heart of Nashville.”

In November 2023, the two even performed a moving rendition of John Lennon’s ballad “Imagine” at the late Rosalynn Carter’s tribute service.

Trisha Yearwood has spoken about being a stepmother to Garth Brooks’ daughters

Both Brooks and Yearwood have publicly spoken about how raising the three girls took precedent in their lives over fame and music.

In 2021, Yearwood told SheKnows that though she struggled to find her footing as a stepparent initially, now she can’t imagine life without Brooks’ daughters.

“It was a gift that I received from Garth and the girls of having them in a life that I didn’t know I was missing,” she said. “I can’t imagine my life without them.”

Brooks famously stepped back from music to stay home with his daughters, announcing a semi-retirement in 2000.

He told The Tennessean in 2019 that — with a few exceptions — every day for 14 years, Brooks and Mahl exchanged their daughters at 6 pm

“They saw both their parents in the morning and both parents in the evening for 14 years,” he told the Nashville paper. “That’s how we ran it because we knew it was right for those kids. If you did what was right for the kids, you were going to do what was right for you. It was simple.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com