Keith Urban received high praise from Oprah Winfrey when he appeared on her talk show Monday afternoon. When discussing his latest album, Get Closer, the media queen declared, "I can feel your heart in every song."
It's a compliment Urban should be proud of. His path to joyful musician, husband (to actress Nicole Kidman) and father (to 2 1/2-year-old Sunday Rose) hasn't been entirely smooth. Although his career has enjoyed stellar success over the past years, a self-declared "lack of love" in his life contributed to issues with addiction (he's been to rehab three times in 8 years) and dissatisfaction in his personal life.
However, Urban is quick to give credit where credit is due when it comes to having turned his life around. His wife, he says, is the one person who saved him.
"I look back now and realize Nic has taught me so much and brought so much into my life, and opened my eyes in so many ways," he told Winfrey.
Urban noted that he would have understood if Kidman chose to leave him after discovering his struggles with addiction. However, a few months into their 2006 marriage, she chose to lovingly confront him about his issues instead. According to Urban, the intervention served to bring them even closer as a couple.
"It was really a profound moment in so many ways. The way in which Nic handled that moment was just perfect," he told Winfrey. "Everything was just designed, I believe, for that moment to fuse us together."
At first, Urban questioned whether leaving for rehab so early into his marriage would cause harm. "Surely let's give it a few years...this kind of thing could tear us apart," he told Winfrey he was thinking at the moment.
However, he ended up leaving the very night of the intervention. "I just said, 'I don't want to do anything but go.' I didn't care about anything else."
While in treatment he realized that he was lacking love for himself, above all, and had been falling into a pattern where he avoided true connection. "I wasn't really giving myself fully. I was holding back because I was scared," he told Winfrey.
And now? Well, as he told Winfrey, he's now in the best place he's ever been.
Nicole Kidman, who appeared on the show along with her husband, had the following to add regarding how their union works: "I think marriage is about, every day, trying to make it better and working through things and when things are tough, saying, 'I'm going to come to you and talk,'" she told Winfrey. "We're just very tight, and we stay really tight."
Do you admire Keith and Nicole as a couple? (Oprah certainly seems to!) I have to hand it to them for making a high-profile union work--and appearing unflappably genuine about it, too. Be sure to let me know what's on your mind.
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