Billy Currington photo by Kate Powers, courtesy of UMG Nashville.
Valentine’s Day can be intimidating for the guy looking for the perfect gift for the object of their affection. While Billy Currington sings romantic songs like “Must Be Doin’ Somethin’ Right,” he wasn’t always so smooth. He remembers his first Valentine’s Day as a ‘boyfriend.’
“I was in first or second grade,” Billy said. “I remember, ‘OK, it’s Valentine’s Day,’ and 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 and I remember going down to her classroom and knocking on the door and getting her to come to the door. I handed it to her and I took off running.”
Dierks Bentley is a happily married man now but once upon a time, he looked at Valentine’s Day as the defining moment in a relationship. Deciding on a gift meant deciding just how much he liked the girl he was seeing,
“As a single guy in the past, if you were dating someone, it’s that holiday that comes along where you have to really stamp out on paper exactly where the relationship stands,” he said. “You don’t want to undershoot it ’cause then you’ll be in trouble. 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 has a show scheduled for February 14 in Dekalb, Illinois so he’ll have to wait to celebrate with his wife Cassidy and their two young daughters. Getting married and having children has taught Dierks just how much he can love another.
“You get married and that’s a long-term, bigger image of what love can be,” he said. “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 bigger. I think you just find that you can love more than you ever thought you could before.”
