Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Publisher Katherine Church (L) and singer Eric Church arrive for the 45th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 18, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Who is Eric Church married to, and how long have they been together? Here’s everything you need to know about this adorable couple, ahead of Church’s performance at the Super Bowl.
1. The Couple Has Been Married 13 Years & Has Two Kids
Jason Davis/Getty Images for T.J. MartellSinger-songwriter Eric Church (in a rare shot without his sunglasses) stands with Katherine Blasingame Church at the Best Cellars Wine Dinner hosted by the T.J. Martell Foundation on April 24, 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee.
The couple recently celebrated 13 years of marriage, mere weeks before Church is slated to co-sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl 55. According to the Boot, the wedding took place in 2008 at a spa and resort in North Carolina. The couple have two children together. The eldest is Boone, born 2011. The younger, Hawk, was born in 2015, just two years before Church’s blood clot scare.
CMT reports that Hawk’s full given name is Tennessee Hawkins Church, but that the “Hawk” nickname sprang out of a conversation Church had with his wife.
“We have a bunch of property out west of town,” CMT reports, “And I was out there one day, and honestly saw a hawk, as weird as that is, and I called my wife, and said, ‘Have you thought about Hawk?’”
2. Katherine Works in the Music Industry (And Eric Wrote a Song About Her)
Rick Diamond/Getty Images for ACMHolly Williams and Katherine Church pose backstage during the 9th Annual ACM Honors at the Ryman Auditorium on September 1, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee.
In an interview with Taste of Country, Church confirmed that he met his future wife when Katherine “was trying to hook me up to write with one of her writers”, as she worked in music publishing.
“It’s great now, because being a publisher and being somebody in the industry, I can bounce songs off of her and she has the knowledge, you know, to be kind of that sounding board of what I should cut and what I shouldn’t cut,” Church went on to add.
In an interview with the Boot, he confirmed that he wrote the song You Make It Look So Easy for his wife, stating it was “100% about” their relationship. The singer famously performed the song for his wife on the occasion of their wedding.
3. The Couple Started a Charitable Fund
In 2013, the couple created a charity together. Called “The Chief Cares Fund”, its stated goal is to provide aid for families in need. The fund’s page states that it has served “underprivileged families and children throughout Tennessee and Eric’s home state of North Carolina,” as well as contributing to internaional aid in places like Nepal and Haiti.
In 2016, the Country Daily reported that the Chief Cares Fund had donated $1 million towards diabetes research.
In a statement for Stop Diabetes, Church opened up about his family struggles with diabetes, which affects his mother. “Growing up, I remember my mother always working hard to manage her diabetes,” Church wrote. “I feel like for the first time in history, this cure is within reach. I want to see it in my lifetime, and most of all, in my mother’s.”
4. ‘People’ Once Reported on the Couple’s Hectic Backstage Life
“It will always be a song that I think about where I was at that time in my life, where my kids were, and just how that little bit of light is what made the difference.”
Hear Eric talk about writing the song “Monsters” now.
People once reported on an interesting backstage incident the couple faced as young parents. Ahead of one CMA performance, Eric and Katherine were juggling not only the logistics of getting from the hotel to the awards show venue, but also the logistics of feeding a baby. At the time, their son Boone was five weeks old.
In a candid backstage conversation with the publication at the event, Church gave some insights into his experiences that evening:
“This whole night, for me, is just rock and roll! My wife [was] pumping breastmilk at the Hilton next door. We were running late and had to get over here to play the show and she was on her left breast — we had done the right one. We were waiting for the pump to finish and I was like, ‘We gotta go!’”
In the same piece, Church revealed that baby Boone often had an easier time going to sleep when Dad was there to help.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling when no one else other than me can get him to go to sleep,” Church told the magazine. “I’m the guy who gets him to go down.”
5. Church Thinks He Is ‘Hard to Love’
CMT reported comments made by Church during a radio interview.
“True love to me is when you love a person in spite of all their fallibilities, and for me, I have a lot of them,” Church was quoted as saying by CMT. “I’m definitely at times hard to love, and that’s what’s great about Katherine and the way she loves me. She loves me in spite of those things, and really for those things.”
“Hard to love” is a line Church has also used in his music, arguably most famously in You Make It Look So Easy. That song includes the line “Yeah, I’m hard to love and ever harder to live with/And I know there’s days when you just want to up and quit”.
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