Valentine's Day: Music Stars Get Sentimental

In country music, life often imitates art for the singers of our favorite love songs. To celebrate Valentine's Day, The Boot gathered quotes from some of the genre's most romantic stars to find out their sentiments on love and their holiday plans.

Keith Urban: "When we start relationships, we're so capable of honoring each other at the beginning with cards, flowers, chocolates, attention, affection and priority," acknowledges the husband to Oscar-winning actress, Nicole Kidman, further explaining that "staying present" is the key to keeping that level of romance alive throughout the relationship. "All of that, all too many times, starts to drift away, and it drifts away because it's easy at the beginning. It just happens naturally. You're almost overdoing it sometimes in the beginning. I was listening to the radio, [and] they're talking about when is a relationship too soon to give Valentine's gifts. Some woman said, 'I was dating this guy three weeks and it was Valentine's Day, and he gave me an iPad for Valentine's Day.' That's a ridiculous gift for Valentine's Day!"

Taylor Swift: "I'm probably going to be with my friends, or rehearsing," she tells Ryan Seacrest of her non-romantic Valentine's plans. "I'll be working on the lighting rig, and lighting cues. And I don't think I'd rather be anywhere else, to be honest."

Alan Jackson: "[My wife Denise and I] have a lot of history together now, and we're happier than we've ever been," Alan says. "She's still beautiful, and she's always inspired songs. One of my early hits was a song called 'I'd Love You All Over Again,' I wrote for her for our tenth anniversary. There's been a zillion songs that have pieces of our good days and bad days inspired, and they continue to."

Darius Rucker: "I told her I was going to marry her on our first date," the singer says of his wife, Beth. "It takes a strong woman to be married to a musician, especially a musician who was drinking and partying as hard as I was, and I think life for us is where we are now. It took a long time for us to get to where we are now, and we say to each other all the time, 'I love us. I love our family. I love us.' I thank her every day for staying with me and being the strong woman she is, because with Hootie & the Blowfish, I could be gone for three months and then I'd come home for two days and then I'd be gone again for a month, and she put up with all that crap. [She] and country music saved my life."

Billy Currington: "I remember my first girlfriend," the country heartthrob recalls. "I was in first or second grade. I got her a box of chocolates or whatever it was, and I remember going down to her classroom and knocking on the door ... I handed it to her, and I took off running."

Dierks Bentley: "You get married and that's a long-term, bigger image of what love can be," he explains. "Then you have a child, and it makes your heart bigger. You find that you can love more than you ever thought you could before."

Eric Church: "True love is when you love a person in spite of all their fallibilities, and I have a lot of them," Eric admits. "I'm definitely at times hard to love, and that's what's great about [my wife] Katherine and the way she loves me. She loves me in spite of those things and really for those things."

Blake Shelton: "I'm one of those guys that's like, 'Oh s---. It's Valentine's Day," he tells People magazine. "I better get flowers or something.' It's not a guy's holiday, so they suck to me."



Brad Paisley: "Very simple," he says of his plans with his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley. "When you have kids, it is what it is. You know? You fight for every last minute together."

Justin Moore: "I'm not real good at it. I don't claim to be though," he admits. "[My wife Kate] always beats me in the presents. She's a lot better at thinking of the sentimental things. It's not that I don't try. I just, I don't have the brains she does for that kind of thing. She's always a lot better at me than that."

Kelleigh Bannen: "My husband is chronically cheap, the most frugal man ever!" she says. "Because of that, gift-giving is not something he's great at, because he hates spending money on things. One of our first holidays together, he gave me socks for Christmas! But last Valentine's Day, I came back from working out and a present was sitting out on the kitchen table. And I was like, 'Is this for me?' I opened it and it was this awesome perfume. It's a Bond #9 perfume called Nuits de NoHo, and I had never even heard of it. But Jeff had gone and found someone at the store to help pick out a perfume for me. I wear it all the time. I love it. I was like, 'We're turning over a new leaf ... finally.'"

Little Big Town's Jimi Westbrook: "We were in the band a long time before there was ever anything," he says of his wife and bandmate Karen Fairchild. "There was always something underlying there that we were kind of trying to ignore. And then when the opportunity came, when all of us ended up single at the same time, [it was ] a very strange turn of events for the band in a lot of different ways. Those feelings, you were able to come out with them finally. It was like, we're single. Let's get together. She has a beautiful heart and she's absolutely gorgeous. I love her dearly."

Little Big Town's Phillip Sweet: "I think everything that I had gone through before had prepared me to be ready to see that there was genuine love there for me and my Rebecca. I wouldn't have been ready before I met her. It's been a really great journey to heal through the past and to know real love."

Jake Owen: "I'm very romantic. I mean, it oozes out of me. Seriously, I buy t-shirts in the shapes of hearts. That's the only thing that fits me. I'm one big heart. I give love."

Randy Montana: "Valentine's Day happens to be the anniversary of me and my wife's first date, so we always try to treat that a little extra special."

Casey James: "I'm always very chill on Valentine's Day, other than always taking care of my mama," the proud son admits. "I always get her a card, some chocolates and flowers, because I always think of her first on those types of occasions."

Tim McGraw: "I feel like it's more of an all-year round thing, but I try to do something," Tim notes of his wife, Faith Hill. "Sometimes are better than others. It depends on how much time that I have or how lazy I'm being. But I do pretty well most of the time. Sometimes (my gifts to Faith) are bigger than others, sometimes they're just very simple. Faith has a rose garden, she loves being around her rose garden and cutting roses. I've been finding these antique vases to get her for several occasions, so those have been pretty cool."