From one country music power couple to another. Maren Morris and her singer-songwriter husband, Ryan Hurd, look to another long-distance couple for advice on keeping their marriage strong: Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman.
“I’ve learned so much from Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. They’ve got the two week rule; he’s got his kids out on the road. They just make it look so normal and it makes me and Ryan feel like this could be normal as well,” the 28-year-old Grammy winner told Us Weekly exclusively at the YouTube Music & Maren Morris Fan Experience in New York City on Thursday, March 7. “We do a pretty good job at constantly keeping in contact, lots of FaceTime. We have the same manager now, so she helps our calendars really coalesce well and that’s helped it a good bit. Especially now that we’re married, it’s a little bit more important to us to see each other. We try to have a good balance.”
Morris and Hurd, 32, exchanged vows in Nashville in March 2018. (Urban and Kidman have been married since 2006.)
“[Ryan’s] always been a creative collaborator in my life, that’s how we met,” Morris noted. “We were paired together six years ago to write a song. We didn’t know each other and it just kind of grew from there, so music has always been really intertwined in our love for each other, and now that we aren’t just songwriters, we’re artists, the timing of being married and also touring is very chaotic at times.”
While the “Middle” singer obviously loves spending time with her husband, she also dished on her favorite girls’ night activities — including watching The Bachelor.
“I love karaoke. Sometimes I just love sitting my back porch, I have a projector in our backyard, so we’ll just, like, watch movies and drink wine back there,” she told Us. “We went and saw Amy Schumer at the Ryman a few months back and she was very pregnant and hilarious. That was sort of like a fun, non-musical thing to do for once.”
As for Bachelor Colton Underwood, Morris revealed that she is “even more confused” about the former football player’s season after the Women Tell All special.
“I’m like, ‘What else could happen at this point?’ I feel like all his cards are used up,” she quipped.
The “My Church” songstress, who will kick off her Girl tour with friends and fellow country artists RaeLynn and Cassadee Pope on Saturday, March 9, named Miranda Lambert, Sheryl Crow, Dolly Parton and Brandi Carlile, whom she collaborated with on the song “Common,” as her inspirations.
“It feels amazing to be embraced by your heroes. That’s a very weird thing to comprehend,” she explained. “I feel like it’s just, like, insanity because they could really be supportive or a fan of anyone, and for them to stop their life for a second and give you a little bit of shine, it makes me feel hopeful about the future. It makes me want to pay it forward as well to other new artists.”
Morris added on Thursday that she hopes her sophomore album, Girl — and specifically the title track single — will be relatable for her fans.
“[The song ‘Girl’] started as me addressing another person that I was having an issue with, like, ‘Why are we having this stupid competition with each other’s careers? This doesn’t help either one of us or our psyches so what’s the deal?’ And then I realized, ‘No girl, you’re writing this about you. You’re the problem,’” Morris admitted. “So that was kind of a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one. I felt like it was really soulful and cathartic to write that day and it was just a message of tough love to myself that I needed to hear. I figured if I was that touched by it and emotionally moved to write it that day, then maybe other people would be moved by it as well.”
Girl is available now.
