Clint Black and his wife, Lisa Hartman Black, have been married for over three decades. And their real-life love story may as well be made into a Hallmark movie! It’s that sweet!
The pair, who wed on Oct. 20, 1991, met ten months prior on New Year’s Eve. It was then that Black was headlining a show in Houston – a city where both he and Hartman grew up. Little did he know that night he would lock eyes with his future wife.
Hartman, an actress, who, at the time, was in town promoting her role in a movie, had scored tickets to Black’s concert. She even ended up backstage with a swath of fans, who were waiting to meet the country crooner.
“I was incredibly ill at a New Year’s Eve concert in Houston,” Black once recalled on The Bobby Bones Show of the night fate stepped in. “…. Lisa and her mom were back in Houston for the holidays and came to the show. We met backstage briefly. Then we had mutual friends who were matchmakers, who were trying to get us together.”
30 years ago today, Lisa and I said ‘I do’ and started our wonderful life together! She’s a wonderful wife, and mother to our Lily Pearl. We’re so lucky we found each other! pic.twitter.com/ND0eYr723a
— Clint Black (@Clint_Black) October 20, 2021
“I knew I was looking at somebody amazing. I didn’t know anything about her. I didn’t know her TV show,” the singer-songwriter later told People. “I just looked at her eyes, and I was just, wow!”
After their initial meet-and-greet, despite both having busy schedules, things seemed to move quickly for Black and Hartman. So much so they tied the knot less than a year later.
“We knew pretty quickly,” Hartman admitted. “It happened pretty quickly. I mean it was an immediate attraction, and then we went on our first date and we just talked about everything under the sun. I don’t know. We just clicked. You just know when there’s something.”
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Of note, Black and Hartman didn’t fall for each other in their early years. When they crossed paths, he was 29, and she was 35. And Hartman has credited her maturity to knowing what she wanted when she met Black.
“I think because we’re a little bit older, you know, we were not in our 20s. So we lived some life,” she said. “We had a lot of relationships, you know, business, personal and social, and I just feel like we were more developed. And, I don’t know, we just had a feeling, and we were right.”
The pair exchanged vows on Black’s 180-acre farm outside of Houston and have been happily married ever since. And, on May 8, 2001, they welcomed their first and only child, a daughter named Lily Pearl, into the world. (Black is also father to Chelsea Bain, his daughter from a previous relationship).
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Along with that, Hartman has been the muse for many of Black’s love songs. A singer in her own right, she joined her husband on tracks like “When I Said I Do,” “You Still Get To Me,” “Easy For Me To Say,” and “Til the End of Time.”
The lovebirds, who won an ACM award for Vocal Event of the Year in 2000 for “When I Said I Do,” also starred in movies like Flicka: Country Pride and Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack together. And, in 2021, they appeared as Snow Owls on The Masked Singer before teaming up for their first-ever joint 24-date tour, dubbed the Mostly Hits & The Mrs. Tour.
Thanks to the success of that tour, and a widely-watched PBS Special, which began airing in June, they will embark on another tour in November.
While no romance is perfect, the Blacks have some advice as they share the secret to their long-lasting, successful marriage.
“When Roy Rogers heard we were getting married, he said, ‘I’ll give you one piece of advice. ‘Don’t ever go to bed angry,’” Black says. “Now there’s a more complicated way that psychologists have talked about it. But if you look at emotions as drops of mercury on the table, you want to clear one off before another one comes along because before too long, you’ll end up with a blob. You can’t dissect it, you can’t identify it from the past. So it’s good to get that stuff out of the way as you go. We’re going to irritate each other. We’re going to embarrass each other. We’re going to make mistakes, misread each other and you have to assume the best of your spouse.”
