Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins’ love story reads like a fairy tale. The two met in the first grade, and briefly dated in high school. Their relationship didn’t last, but they remained close friends.
Eventually, both Thomas and Lauren got into serious relationships with other people that almost led to marriage. Thanks to Rhett’s future father-in-law, he had a chance to tell Lauren how he’d felt about her all along. “Her dad called me and said, ‘If you don’t come over here tonight and tell Lauren how you feel about her, then I’m going to tell her how you feel about her,” Rhett told CBS.
The couple dated for six months before getting engaged and married when they were both 22. In Thomas Rhett’s new single, “Marry Me,” he decided to take his story with Lauren down a different path and put himself in that make-believe place where he was watching her marry someone else.
“The song was written out of this space where I knew that if I had never told Lauren how I felt about her, I probably have been invited to her wedding and would have watched her marry somebody else,” Rhett told The Boot. “I probably wouldn’t have been quite as sad as the guy in the music video for the song, but it would definitely still have wrecked me.”
The emotion of the song played out during Rhett’s live performance during Sunday night’s ACM Awards where he is up for six awards, including Male Vocalist and Album of the Year as well as Video of the Year for “Marry Me.”
Watch a clip of Thomas Rhett performing “Marry Me” in the video below.
I’m not crying… you’re crying! Thomas Rhett’s “Marry Me” is such an emotional one 😭 #ACMAwards #WestwoodOne pic.twitter.com/RWQ372XiQp
— Cumulus Media (@CumulusMedia) April 16, 2018