Sam Hunt and Hannah Lee Fowler’s marriage was years in the making.
Just before moving to Music City to pursue his country music career, Hunt met Fowler and his life was forever changed. Sparks flew for the singer/songwriter and the nurse, but they eventually broke things off. The romance (and breakup) ultimately inspired several songs on Hunt’s record-breaking debut album, Montevallo, which he named after Fowler’s hometown.
“I didn’t actually live in that town,” Hunt told E! News. “I had never visited Montevallo, but right before I left to go to Nashville I met a girl from there. A lot of the experiences I had with her and the relationship I had with her, that inspired a lot of the songwriting on the album.”
Following the release of Montevallo, Hunt’s career exploded. He earned several chart-topping songs, toured with superstars like Luke Bryan and Lady Antebellum and racked in nominations for award shows left and right. Through it all, he couldn’t manage to get Fowler off his mind. He was determined to win her back, so that’s exactly what he did.
“I think last summer I went out [to Hawaii] about seven times in about three months, trying to talk to her about coming back,” Sam revealed in a 2017 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “And the seventh trip I convinced her.”
Hunt and Fowler remained tight-lipped about their relationship, but after they began popping up on each other’s Instagram feeds, fans assumed they were back on.
The superstar secretly proposed to Fowler during a trip to Israel in the fall of 2016. The proposal was kept under wraps for several months until the singer’s publicist confirmed the engagement in January 2017.
“I was pretty sure she was going to say yes, but I wanted her to say yes without any reservation,” Hunt shared with Nash Country Daily after the news of the proposal broke. “I’m not 100 percent sure she didn’t have any reservation. It was a big moment for her. She’s all in. She’s 100 percent committed, and I am too.”
Hunt and Fowler opted for a traditional wedding, exchanging vows at a Methodist Church in his hometown of Cedartown, Georgia on April 15, 2017.
“It was perfect,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “Hannah was happy, and that was my number one priority, so it worked out. My family was there. I got to spend time with people I haven’t gotten to see in a while and celebrate a special time in my life and in my wife’s life, and our families lives, so it was a really, a really great moment.”
After the wedding, Hunt stepped away from the spotlight a bit to decompress and enjoy his new life with Hannah.
“I got to a point where I really didn’t feel like I could I was smelling the roses because it was happening so fast,” he explained in a 2019 interview, adding, “so I stepped back and kind of digested it all and kind of processed everything that had happened.”
His long-awaited sophomore album, Southside, dropped in April of 2020.
