Kacey Musgraves on Finding Love With Ruston Kelly: ‘It Was the Last Thing I’d Expected’
Kacey Musgraves and fellow singer Ruston Kelly will celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary this fall, but the "High Horse" star admits it's a love story she never saw coming.
"It was the last thing I’d expected," Musgraves says in an interview with Hits Daily Double. "I wasn’t gonna date."
She was still getting over a bad breakup (Musgraves previously dated ex-bandmate Misa Arriaga) when she decided to attend a performance night at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in March 2016 — a place she doesn't frequent.
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"I was sitting by myself at a table. Ruston played his first song, and I was just stunned by everything in it — the words, the melody, what he was saying. I was just sitting at this table, crying," she recalls. "When it was over, I went up and introduced myself. I said, 'Hey, I don’t really ever do this, but here’s my number; I really wanna write with you.'"
That writing session didn't end up happening until a few months later, and she considered canceling because she didn't want to write with someone she "didn't really know."
But ... "The second Ruston walked into my house, I felt like Dorothy when the colorized part happens in The Wizard of Oz," Musgraves says, describing the feeling. "We didn’t even write a song. We just talked, and talked, and talked. He didn’t leave until like 3AM. It was the easiest, most natural thing in the world — and I didn’t want it to stop."
And it hasn't.
Musgraves says that love — real, trusting love — has changed the way she makes music. "I'm living in a much more positive light now,” she acknowledges. "It’s maybe opened my heart a little. And I realized maybe I’ve been a little over-[self]protected. Maybe I can let loose a little more, trust more in the songs, what I have at home and out here."
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