The darling of America! Grow up, Lauren Akins had never imagined that she would marry a world-famous country singer and leave her own dreams behind. But after tying the knot with Thomas Rhett and became the subject of songs such as “Die a Happy Man”, she became a celebrity in her own name and decided to embrace the changes that brought life.
Born Lauren Gregory, Akins grew up in Madison, Tennessee, a town just north of Nashville, with her younger sister, Macy, and her younger brother, Grayson. They met Rhett in first grade, but they did not become good friends until they came together to camp together in the summer for sixth grade. By the time the eighth grade was running, they were ‘at the hips’, she writes in her new memoir, Living in love.
The couple tried dating in high school, but their romance did not work at first. While attending various colleges, they were in serious relationships with other people before Rhett finally told Akins that he still had feelings for her. After a whole wind of a few months of dating, he proposed in December 2011, and they tied the knot next October.
Around the same time, the countryman’s career began in Georgia, forcing Akins to decide whether to follow him on tour or use her University of Tennessee degree.
“I loved this man with everything in me, and his dreams were all fulfilled,” she writes in the book. ‘But would you not know it? Yesterday, in the midst of all that excitement and celebration, a familiar question came to my mind. A question I have struggled with for at least a few years. I looked around at the shining lights and wondered, ‘What is it with my dreams?’ ”
Eventually, Akins found a way to do both, attending as many of Rhett’s concerts as she could between mission trips to Haiti and Uganda. Despite a few bumps in the road, the image-perfect couple managed to make it. They became parents in May 2017 when they adopted daughter Willa Gray from Uganda. Just three months later, Akins gave birth to her second daughter, Ada James, and her third, Lennon Love, arrived in February 2020.
“I can not believe God gave me three precious angels to ascend to earth,” Akins writes in her acknowledgments of her memoirs. ‘My heart could explode just thinking about how much I love each of you.’
Scroll down to read 10 revelations from Living in love! And for even more, pick up a copy in bookstores now.
