Lauren Akins Gets Real About Saving Herself for Thomas Rhett, Marriage Counseling and More in ‘Live in Love’ Memoir

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Lauren Akins Gets Real About Saving Herself for Thomas Rhett, Marriage Counseling and More in ‘Live in Love’ Memoir

America’s sweetheart! Growing up, Lauren Akins never imagined that she would marry a world-renowned country singer and leave behind her own dreams. But after tying the knot with Thomas Rhett and becoming the subject of songs like “Die a Happy Man,” she became a celebrity in her own right and decided to embrace the changes that life brought about. Born Lauren Gregory, Akins grew up in Madison, Tennessee, a town just north of Nashville, with her younger sister, Macy, and their little brother, Grayson. She met Rhett in first grade, but they did not become good friends until they went to camp together during the summer before sixth grade. By the time eighth grade rolled around, they were “joined at the hip,” she writes in her new memoir, Live in Love. The couple tried dating in high school, but their romance did not work out at first. While attending different colleges, they were in serious relationships with other people before Rhett finally told Akins that he still had feelings for her. After a whirlwind few months of dating, he proposed in December 2011, and they tied the knot the following October. Around the same time, the Georgia native’s career started taking off, forcing Akins to decide whether to follow him on tour or put her nursing degree from University of Tennessee to use. “I loved this man with everything in me, and his dreams were all coming true,” she writes in the book. “But wouldn’t you know it? Right there in the middle of all that excitement and celebration, a familiar question came bubbling up into my mind. A question I’d been struggling with for at least a couple years. I looked around at the glittering lights and I wondered, ‘What about my dreams?’” In the end, Akins found a way to do both, attending as many of Rhett’s concerts as she could in between mission trips to Haiti and Uganda. Despite a few bumps in the road, the picture-perfect pair managed to make it work. They became parents in May 2017 when they adopted daughter Willa Gray from Uganda. Just three months later, Akins gave birth to their second daughter, Ada James, and their third, Lennon Love, arrived in February 2020. “I cannot believe God gave me you three precious angels to raise on earth,” Akins writes in her memoir’s acknowledgments. “My heart could explode just thinking about how much I love each of you girls.” Scroll down to read 10 revelations from Live in Love! And for even more, pick up a copy in bookstores now.

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Akins Instagram/Instagram

She Saw Rhett as a ‘Best Friend’ at First

As Akins and Rhett’s families got closer when they were in high school, so did they. “I always got the feeling that he still liked me the way he liked me way back at church camp in the sixth grade, but I also felt like he gave mixed signals about what he wanted to do about it,” she recalls.

Credit: Courtesy of Thomas Rhett Akins/Instagram

She and Rhett Saved Themselves for Marriage

Akins reveals in Live in Love that she and Rhett “stayed true to our values” while dating their respective college sweethearts, Michael and Kacy, and continued to do so after rekindling their romance in May 2011. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we didn’t kiss a ton or get a little too close a few times,” she writes. “We just always made a choice to stop short of breaking the promise we’d made: to save ourselves for marriage.”

Looking back, Akins admits that staying abstinent “was not easy,” and she had “hoped Thomas Rhett would hurry up with the engagement so we could get started on planning our wedding, in part because I wanted to hurry up and get to our wedding night.”

When that fateful evening finally came, the newlyweds were “the best kind of nervous,” Lauren recalls. “Was it perfect? I don’t know how to answer that! We couldn’t compare it to anything else, and we didn’t have to—because our first time together was just ours. It was the start of a whole new adventure for the two of us. Plus, they say practice makes perfect, right? And our honeymoon in Hawaii was going to be the perfect place to practice. A lot.”

Credit: Courtesy of Thomas Rhett Akins/Instagram

She Was ‘Kind of Annoyed’ Before Rhett Proposed

When Akins and Rhett’s families took them to dinner in December 2011, she had no idea that he was about to pop the question. In fact, Rhett kept bugging Akins to go upstairs at the restaurant to “see the new cigar room.” She asked him to “wait until after dinner,” but he would not budge.

“I was kind of annoyed. I wanted to sit with our families and enjoy this moment, not go look at a cigar room I’d already seen,” she remembers.

However, Akins ultimately gave in. When they went upstairs, Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight” started playing and Rhett got down on bended knee. He handed her a bottle of expensive wine with “Marry Me?” written on it and “pulled out the most beautiful diamond engagement ring” Akins had ever seen.

Credit: Julie Paisley

Her Best Friend Died at a Young Age

One of Akins’ childhood friends, Hunter, died in a freak accident ahead of her and Rhett’s wedding. He fell off a rope swing into a valley, where he hit his head on rocks and was pronounced dead at the scene. To this day, Akins and Rhett wear camouflage bracelets that Hunter’s mom made for them.

“Thomas Rhett never takes his off,” Akins writes. “You see that bracelet in photos in magazines, and when he’s walking the red carpet in a suit and tie, and on his wrist at his concerts.”

Credit: Courtesy of Thomas Rhett Akins/Instagram

She and Rhett Go to Counseling

While engaged, the couple sought premarital counseling after struggling to cope with Hunter’s death. “We wanted our marriage to go right, right from the start. We weren’t experts on marriage,” Akins writes, noting that they have continued “to see a marriage counselor on a regular basis” since a 2015 trip to Hawaii.

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Akins/Instagram

Rhett Was Gung Ho About Her Going to Haiti

When Akins was offered a chance to go on a medical trip to Haiti in 2015, she “felt obligated” to stay in the U.S. to support Rhett while he was promoting his second album, Tangled Up. However, he urged her to go.

“I reminded him how nervous he tends to get before his TV appearances and big interviews, and he took my hand and he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘I think you have an opportunity here to do something a little bit more important than holding my hand before I go onstage, don’t you?’” she writes.

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Akins/Instagram

Willa Was ‘Laying on the Floor’ the First Time She Met Her

After working in Haiti, Akins traveled to Uganda, where she came across “a baby laying on her stomach on the cement floor,” covered in dirt. She writes that she “felt such an overwhelming responsibility” to take care of the 5-month-old, and told Rhett all about her later that evening over FaceTime.

“Without even skipping a beat, I mean, with no hesitation, Thomas Rhett said, ‘We’ll do it. We’ll bring her home,’” she writes.

Not long after, in December 2016, Akins found out that she was pregnant. “Thomas Rhett and I were overjoyed,” she recalls. “We were going to be parents times two!”

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Akins/Instagram

She and Rhett ‘Hit Rock Bottom’ After Becoming Parents

Akins writes that she “never felt so completely uncomfortable” in her own skin than she did after giving birth to Ada in August 2017. “My body changed. A lot,” she recounts. “I had gained a lot of weight and I was so busy taking care of two baby girls that it felt nearly impossible to take care of myself. … Thankfully Thomas Rhett never, ever made me feel like I wasn’t exactly what he always wanted me to be.”

Akins felt her husband “didn’t understand” what she was going through, however. After all, he still found time to continue working and hit the gym. One night, she lost it on him and “said the unthinkable”: “I think I hate you.” She writes that she did not mean it, but she felt at the time that they “had hit rock bottom” and needed to make a change. Rhett was so supportive that he even offered to quit his job as a singer.

“Lauren’s words cut me so deep,” he writes in the book. “I mean, I could tell she was just done. She didn’t have anything left to give. She felt like she’d already given it all. Which meant this wasn’t going to be about the two of us working on our marriage together. This was on me. I had to step up, or I was gonna lose her.”

After a four-day counseling retreat, the pair got their marriage back on track and learned “how to listen to each other,” Lauren writes.

Credit: Courtesy Lauren Akins/Instagram

She Felt ‘Like a Failure’ After Hiring a Nanny

After becoming parents of three, Akins and Rhett realized they needed assistance. “At some point along the way, I had to swallow my pride and realize that I could not do this all on my own; nor could Thomas Rhett and I keep putting so much of the babysitting burden on our extended family,” she writes. “So we hired a nanny. At first the thought of it made me feel like a failure as a mom. But now? I look at it as a godsend. Our nanny is an angel to me and our kids.”

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Akins/Instagarm

She and Rhett Have Considered Adopting Another Child

“We haven’t ruled out adopting again,” Akins writes. “We’re both in a place where we love our little family so much, we keep thinking, ‘How much more love would we be able to give if our family was just a little bit bigger?’”