A Powerful Bond FIGHT FOR THEIR MARRIAGE Public Reunion
How Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban battled back from their darkest days — and came out stronger
“She’s my best friend. I’ve never had anybody on the planet that knows me as well as she does,” Keith says of Nicole. “I literally just feel like the luckiest guy on the planet.” She feels the same: “God, I love that man,” she’s gushed. “I’m so glad I’m in this world.”
She wrapped her arm around him on the red carpet and grinned from the audience as he accepted the Academy of Country Music Awards trophy for Vocal Event of the Year. Nicole Kidman and husband Keith Urban looked as happy and affectionate as ever at the April 15 ceremony in Las Vegas. But there was something unusual about this appearance: It was the first time they’d been seen together since the Screen Actors Guild Awards in LA, nearly three months earlier.
Like many celebrity couples, Nicole and Keith, both 50, have to spend a lot of time apart because of work. But unlike so many Hollywood stars whose relationships have imploded recently, they’ve made a decision to do whatever it takes to keep their 11-year marriage strong, no matter what issues they face. “Nicole and Keith sometimes lead separate lives, with him being on the road and her on set,” notes a source. “But they’re determined to make their marriage work. Despite going through ups and downs, they’re the best of friends and love each other very much.” Any reports of trouble are false, a rep for Nicole tells Life & Style,
adding, “She and Keith are very happily married.”
FACING ADVERSITY
The Aussie stars do spend long stretches away from each other. Keith is currently playing festivals and promoting the April 27 release of his new album; he’ll kick off his 60- date Graffiti U Tour in June. Nicole spent February and March filming The Goldfinch in NYC, then headed to Monterey, Calif., to shoot Season 2 of Big Little Lies in April. But they have a secret. “For every single night he’s away,” Nicole says, “he leaves me a love letter. Every single night of our relationship.”
The duo have gone to couples therapy, even spending five days at Marriage Quest, a private counseling retreat in Cabot, Vt., earlier this year. “It was Keith’s idea to visit the boot camp,” says an insider. “They addressed a range of issues and learned to break down walls.” The parents of daughters Sunday, 9, and Faith, 7, both believe in the power of therapy. “They’ve overcome their marital problems in the past,” the source says, “and know they can do it again.” It’s no wonder a song Keith wrote about Nicole, a duet with Carrie Underwood, is called “The Fighter.” When he first played it for her, “I started to cry,” Nicole says. “He writes these things... and they’re like beautiful gifts.”
HAUNTING HISTORY
The couple have been open about the problems they faced early in their marriage. Four months after their 2006 wedding, Keith — an admitted former drug addict who had gotten sober following a 1998 rehab stay — relapsed. “I’d go to sleep, wake up a couple of hours later, go at it again, drinking to take the edge off,” Keith recalled. “I remem- ber thinking, I’m probably not going to make it until tomorrow.” His addiction, he admits, “caused the implosion of my fresh marriage. It survived, but it’s a miracle it did.” That’s largely because Nicole fought so hard for it. “I was very, very blessed to have Nic call an intervention on me,” Keith says. He finally checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and has been sober since. “For the first time in my life,” he recalls, “I could shake off the shackles of addiction.”
It was a brutal time for Nicole. “It was painful, deeply painful,” she confessed in 2007. “We were in a very, very, very bad, painful place, and have managed to step through it.” A decade later, she admitted she still got anxious if Keith didn’t answer his phone and revealed that she would “keep calling and calling” until she got through.
Of course, the fact that the country crooner is constantly surrounded by adoring women doesn’t make things easier. Underwear model Amanda Wyatt claimed to have had an affair with Keith after he was engaged to Nicole in 2005, which he denied, and Keith was photographed looking cozy with then-risingstar Kelsea Ballerini as they got off his tour bus in 2015. Kelsea, now 24 and married, will open for Keith this summer and fall on his Graffiti U tour. But Nicole trusts her husband — and he trusts her. The actress raised eyebrows in
September when she planted a kiss on the lips of her hunky Big Little Lies co-star Alexander Skarsgård, 41 — with Keith standing nearby — after he won the best supporting actor award at the Emmys. And she’d been called out before for being publicly affectionate offscreen with Dev Patel, 28, who played her son in Lion. Yet Nicole and Keith are secure enough in their marriage not to worry. “They’ve always had a great sex life,” notes the source.
That’s apparently an understatement. “I’ve ex- plored obsession,” Nicole revealed in a free-wheeling 2009 interview. “I’ve explored strange sexual fetish stuff.” In fact, the only regret Nicole has about her marriage to Keith is that it didn’t start when she was younger. “I wish I could have met him much earlier and had way more children with him,” she says. “I mean, if I could have had two more children with him, that would have been just glorious.”
SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM
Nicole famously saw her first marriage crumble. In 2001, Tom Cruise blindsided her by filing for divorce after they’d been wed for 11 years and welcomed two kids. But she and her second husband have already survived intense struggles and come out on the other side. “Nicole stood by Keith during his recovery and feels that if they managed to get through that, they can get through anything,” the source says.
He’s also been there during her toughest times. She was “shattered” by the loss of her father from a heart attack in 2014, she says. Keith was about to go onstage for a concert when she called to tell him the news. “He walked offstage and got on a plane,” she says. “He literally picked me up and pretty much carried me through the next two weeks.”
The secret to her happy marriage to Keith is simple: “Just love,” Nicole said in 2016. “Just love each other, lavish each other with love.” Also, she added with a smile, “We just happen to like each other, too. That works.”