The holiday of romance and love is upon us, and that dastardly Cupid has been shooting his arrows all over the place. On this holiday, some of the Capitol/EMI artists have offered up their thoughts and ideas of love and relationships, just in time for Valentine’s Day (Thursday, February 14th).

AUDIO: Alan Jackson talks about his love for wife, Denise, over the years. 

AJ (Valentine’s Day) OC: …continue to. :24
“We got a lot of history together now, and we’re happier than we’ve ever been. So, she’s still beautiful, and she’s always inspired songs. I mean, one of my early hits was a song called ‘I’d Love You All Over Again,’ I wrote for her for our 10th anniversary. I mean, there’s been a zillion songs that have pieces of our good days and bad days inspired, and they continue to.”

AUDIO: Billy Currington recalls his first Valentine – when he was in first or second grade.

Billy Currington (first Valentine memory) OC: …off running. :21
“Yeah, I remember my first girlfriend. I was in first or second grade. But anyway, I remember, ‘OK, it’s Valentine’s Day,’ and your mom going, ‘You’ve got to get your girlfriend something and you’ve got to go give it to her. I’ll never forget, I got her a box of chocolates or whatever it was, and I remember going down to her classroom and knocking on the door and getting her to come to the door. And I remember I handed it to her, and I took off running.”

AUDIO: Darius Rucker knew he would marry his wife, Beth, on their first date.

Darius Rucker (wife) OC: …her and country music saved my life. :43
“I don’t know what it was about her. I mean, it was EVERYTHING about her. I knew, I told her I was going to marry her on our first date, [laughs] yeah. Beth’s a strong woman. It takes a strong woman to be married to a musician, especially a musician who was drinking and partying as hard as I was, and I think life for us is where we are now. It took a long time for us to get to where we are now, and we say to each other all the time, ‘I love us. I love our family. I love us.’ And I thank her every day for staying with me and being the strong woman she is, because with Hootie & the Blowfish, I could be gone for three months and then I’d come home for two days and then I’d be gone again for a month, and she put up with all that crap. You know, her and country music saved my life.”

AUDIO: Before tying the knot with wife Cassady, Dierks Bentley says Valentine’s Day wasn’t always a pleasant holiday for him. 

Dierks Bentley (Valentine’s Day) 1 OC: …want to. :19
“Well, before, as a single guy in the past, if you were dating someone, it’s that holiday that comes along where you have to really like stamp out on paper exactly where the relationship really stands. You don’t want to undershoot it ’cause then you’ll be in trouble, you know, if you don’t give the right present or don’t say the right things, you’re gonna be in the doghouse. But then if you overstate your hand, then you’re moving the relationship way faster than you actually want to.” 

Dierks Bentley (Valentine’s Day) 2 OC: …could before. :27
“You get married and that’s a long-term, bigger image of what love can be. Then you have a child, and your heart gets spread so thin and it’s so vulnerable, like it’s a really tough, tough feeling, and it can kill you. It can really be painful at times, and at the same time, it’s so great. But it definitely stretches your heart…and it doesn’t change anything, it just makes your heart, I think it just makes it bigger. I think you just find that you can love more than you ever thought you could before.”

AUDIO: Eric Church says his wife, Katherine, loves him “Like Jesus Does.”

 Eric Church (Valentine’s Day) OC: …love song is. :48
“True love to me is when you love a person in spite of all their fallibilities, and for me, I have a lot of ‘em. I’m definitely at times hard to love, and that’s what’s great about Katherine and the way she loves me. She loves me in spite of those things and really for those things. That’s what’s so neat about the song is it’s not getting around those things, that’s a part of who the person is and it can be challenging at times, and that’s what the song talks about, but it’s what true love is. I think if you ask Katherine, I mean her favorite song on the record is ‘Like Jesus Does.’ Wonder why that is? [chuckles] But it’s something that I’m proud that it’s on the record. And again, I just think it’s a great, realistic version of what a true love song is.”

AUDIO: Keith Urban says love means being aware of each other even as the newness of the relationship wears off.

Keith Urban (Valentine’s Day) OC: …just me or… [laughs] :60
“I mean for me, I think a lot of it has to do with just staying present, because you know, when we start relationships, we’re so capable of honoring each other at the beginning off a relationship with cards and flowers and chocolates and attention and affection and priority. And then all of that all too many times starts to drift away, and it drifts away because it’s easy at the beginning. It just happens naturally. You’re almost overdoing it sometimes in the beginning. I was listening to the radio, [and] they’re talking about when is a relationship too soon to give Valentine’s gifts? [laughs] If you’ve been dating a guy six days, and it just started before the 14th…[laughs] and some woman said, ‘I was dating this guy three weeks and it was Valentine’s Day, and he gave me an iPad for Valentine’s Day.’ [laughs] That’s a ridiculous gift for Valentine’s Day. Is it just me, or…[laughs]”

AUDIO: Kelleigh Bannen says her husband, Jeff, wasn’t always the best gift-giver for Valentine’s Day or for any other holiday, until last year.

Kelleigh Bannen (Valentine’s Day) OC: …finally. 1:00
“My husband is chronically cheap, the most frugal man ever! And so, because of that, gift-giving is not something he’s great at, because he hates spending money on things. Literally. He’ll tell you this. One of our first holidays together he gave me socks for Christmas, and other presents have been equally terribly through the ages. But last Valentine’s Day, I came back from working out or something, I came back to the house, and a present was sitting out on the kitchen table. And I was like, ‘Is this for me?’ I opened it and it was this awesome perfume. It’s a Bond #9 perfume called Nuits de NoHo, and I had never even heard of it. But Jeff had gone and found someone at the store to help pick out a perfume for me. I wear it all the time. It’s one of those scents that works really well on me and I wear it every day now, and I love it. I was like, ‘We’re turning over a new leaf…finally.’”

AUDIO: Little Big Town’s Kimberly Schlapman says falling in love with her husband, Stephen Schlapman, came as a big surprise.

Little Big Town (Kimberly falling in love) OC: …healed me. 1:20
Kimberly: “Well, I wasn’t planning on falling in love, at all. I didn’t want to…I wasn’t sure that I ever would.  So, my husband now and I were just really good friends, and after my late husband died all my friends were calling me, all the time. Just checking up on me. He was just an old friend. We had known each other for about six years and he started calling me just like everybody else did.  But, he started calling me more than everybody else did [laughs]. We had both been through similar losses, he hadn’t lost a mate but he had lost a close friend, so we kind of bonded over that. I grieved, kind of, at him a lot. He took my grief, I had a lot of grief left, and he just took it and listened and accepted it and was so understanding and let me talk about my late husband all the time. We still talk about him a lot, and he’s totally fine with it. He says that, that made me who he fell in love with and he never minds if I bring anything from the past up which is just really sweet. I was shocked, I remember when I first realized that I was having feelings. I just thought, OK, this is so weird.  What is this?  I haven’t felt this in a long, long, time. This is weird. But, eventually I allowed myself and it’s been the most beautiful gift of my life. It pulled me out of the deepest hole that I’ve ever been in and healed me.”

AUDIO: Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild and Jimi Westbrook had a chemistry performing together, but it wasn’t until they each found themselves single…at the same time…that sparks flew romantically. The pair, who wed in 2006, have a son, Elijah, who turns three March 5th.

Little Big Town (Jimi & Karen fell in love) OC: (Kimberly) …to be together. :48
JIMI: “We were in the band a long time before there was ever anything which is interesting. I think there was always something underlying there that we were kind of trying to ignore. And then when the opportunity came, when all of us, ended up single kind of at the same time, a very strange turn of events for the band in a lot of different ways. And those feelings, you were able to come out with them finally. It was like, we’re single. Let’s get together. And, you know, she has a beautiful heart and she’s absolutely gorgeous and I just love her dearly.” PHILLIP: “Get a room!” [laughs] KIMBERLY: “They’re a perfect match. They really are. They were meant to be together.”

AUDIO: Little Big Town’s Phillip Sweet was ready for love when he met Rebecca, his wife of nearly six years.

Little Big Town (Phillip – reasons fell in love) OC: …real love. :17
“I think everything that I had gone through before had prepared me to be ready to see that there was genuine love there for me, and my Rebecca.  So, it was just a great time, I wouldn’t have been ready before I met her…Now it’s just been a really great journey to heal through the past and to know real love.”

AUDIO: Valentine’s Day is a special day for Randy Montana, who celebrates the anniversary of his first date with his now wife.

Randy Montana (Valentine’s Day-1st date) OC: …extra special. :08
“Valentine’s Day happens to be the anniversary of me and my wife’s first date, so we always try to treat that a little extra special.”