When Nicole Kidman met Keith Urban in 2005, she was immediately attracted to him. But she says he didn’t get in touch with her for ages after she gave him her phone number.
Kidman told Ellen in 2017, “I remember thinking, I had such a crush on him, and he wasn’t interested in me. It’s true! He didn’t call me for four months.”
Once he picked up the phone, Urban realized what he’d been missing all his life.
“Somebody had given me her number, and I had it in my pocket for a while,” he said on Australian talks show Interview in 2018. “I kept looking at it thinking, ‘If I call this number, she’s going to answer. I don’t know what [to] say.’ I wasn’t in a very healthy place in my life … I’d never have thought she’d see anything in a guy like me. But, at some point, I plucked up the courage to [dial] those numbers and she answered, and we started talking. And we talked and talked and talked and talked, and it was effortless.”
The couple have been inseparable since. It’s been almost 20 years, and they’re just as in love as ever. Here’s Kidman and Urban’s complete relationship timeline.
January 2005
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban met at the G’Day USA Gala, an event honoring Australians that is held in Los Angeles. Kidman was interested and made sure he got her number, but it was a few more months before they’d chat.
June 2005
He was there when she turned 38 on June 20, 2005. Later, Kidman said she knew he was the “love of my life” that night when she saw him on the stoop of her apartment at 5 A.M. with a bouquet of gardenias.
“That is when I went, ‘This is the man I hope I get to marry,’” she said. “I believed by that point he was the love of my life.”
May 2006
In May 2006, Nicole Kidman hosted the 30th Anniversary gala for the organization UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Urban was her date and she announced to reporters that she was engaged.
“He’s actually my fiancé. I wouldn’t be bringing my boyfriend,” she said.
She added, “He’s very good to me.”
June 2006
The couple were married in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, at St. Patrick’s Estate on the beach. They headed to French Polynesia for their honeymoon.
October 2006
Urban struggled with alcoholism and has credited his wife for helping him begin his sobriety. It reportedly started with an intervention held around four months after their wedding. He later told Rolling Stone in 2014 that he was “very, very blessed” that his wife stepped in and helped him enter rehab.
January 2007
The musical artist left rehab after three months of treatment, and they were seen soon after at a Golden Globes party in Los Angeles.
November 2007
Kidman and Urban bought a home together in Nashville in 2007, which is where Urban lived when he wasn’t traveling. They settled on a farm to the southwest of the city.
“We don’t want to live in a compound,” Urban said. “It’s the great thing about Tennessee and especially Nashville. The people are just real people, so they just accept you being neighbors.”
January 2008
Their reps confirmed they were expecting their first child in 2018, saying, “The couple are thrilled.”
Kidman said in a later interview on Live with Kelly and Ryan that Urban flew to Australia to see the ultrasound.
“[He] was there for six hours, saw the heartbeat and then had to fly back [to L.A.] to do a show,” she said.
February 2008
Urban dedicated a song to his wife on stage, telling the crowd, “It’s Valentine’s Day here tomorrow, but today it’s already Valentine’s Day in Australia.”
He chose the tune “Got It Right This Time.”
July 2008
Their first child together, Sunday Rose, was born on July 7, 2008.
“We feel immensely blessed and grateful to be given this beautiful baby girl,” they said in a statement. “She’s an absolute delight.”
November 2008
Kidman was co-starring in the film Australia with Hugh Jackman when he was named the “Sexiest Man Alive.” She was asked at the premiere who she thought should have taken the title: Her husband, of course.
“Keith is my sexiest man alive,” she said. “He is the man I love, and everything is sexy about him.”
December 2010
Their second daughter, Faith Margaret, was born on December 28, 2010. The baby was born via surrogate.
“Our family is truly blessed, and just so thankful, to have been given the gift of baby Faith Margaret,” the parents of two said in a statement. “No words can adequately convey the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone who was so supportive throughout this process, in particular our gestational carrier.”
September 2014
Kidman’s father died in September 2014 unexpectedly after suffering a fall. Urban sang “Amazing Grace” at Antony Kidman’s funeral.
May 2016
Urban shared a clip of himself with Kidman performing a little Caraoke together on Instagram, in which she’s singing the Carrie Underwood parts in their duet hit “The Fighter.”
That same month, Urban told CBS News, “Meeting her and getting married wasn’t life-changing, it was life-beginning. It was literally, like, ‘Okay, life starts.’”
July 2017
Kidman’s major role in the HBO hit Big Little Lies as Celeste Wright involved a lot of difficult scenes portraying domestic violence and assault. She told Entertainment Tonight that Urban helped her recover when she was physically and emotionally drained from scenes.
“Luckily I have a partner who is artistic, so he understands what it takes to support that,” she said. “I came home to loving arms, someone that would hold me, and I was really upset at times. Really damaged, really upset, and physically and emotionally drained and in pain.”
March 2018
At South by Southwest, Urban talked about how Kidman helped him get sober, saying, “I’m just alcoholically wired. I was living a very small life. My life was getting smaller and smaller and that is how I kept it manageable. I was lucky I had a very loving wife. [Getting sober] has freed me up creatively.”
He added more about his connection with Kidman, saying, “I would write these songs about love and relationships. I realized I was writing from all these places of the kind of person I wished I could be. … The only thing that’s changed in my life is I’ve more so become the person I was trying to be.”
June 2019
For the InStyle cover interview for June 2019, Kidman shared some insight on her passions, which are art and her family.
“I love having my artistic path, and then my other passion is my family. That’s probably all I need in my life,” she said.
She added some more about her marriage, saying, “The greatest thing our family priest told us very early on in our marriage was, ‘Always kiss hello and kiss goodbye.’ It just keeps you connected.”
July 2019
On the track “Gemini” off the 2018 album Graffiti U, Urban paid tribute to his wife’s astrological sign and also sang some very suggestive lyrics: “She’s a maniac in the bed, but a brainiac in the head.”
While on Australian radio’s The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Kidman said of the song, “I don’t censor his art if I can be a muse for it. It is embarrassing, but at the same time, yes, it’s better than saying, ‘God, I’m so bored… Make an effort, Nicole.’”
January 2020
Devastating wildfires raged across Australia, and the couple donated to Australia’s Rural Fire Service.
“Our family’s support, thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by the fires all over Australia,” Kidman said on Instagram. “We are donating $500,000 to the Rural Fire Services who are all doing and giving so much right now.”
September 2020
While doing an interview on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s Armchair Expert podcast, Urban said of Kidman, “She’s just the one. She’s the one that I was searching for my whole life, and everything not only changed but had to change in me if I was gonna go that road.”
He continued, “It was like the ultimate fork in the road moment in my life, and it was literally like you either get this right now or you are never, ever gonna get it right. This is your one shot. It felt so obvious.”
June 2021
Kidman celebrated their 15th anniversary with a spicy pic of Urban licking her neck.
Urban’s pic was G-rated, with the caption, “Happy anniversary babygirl !!!!!!! My life started when you said ‘I do’ 5475 days ago today.”
August 2021
Talking about her sex scenes and her husband, Kidman said on E!’s Daily Pop, “My husband is an artist, so he understands all of it, and he also does not get involved. He sees the show at the very end when it’s a show, all edited together, and he’s fresh eyes. He doesn’t read any script, he really doesn’t know what’s going on on the set, he’s got his own career that he’s completely absorbed in.”
January 2022
On CBS Mornings in an interview with Gayle King, Kidman said of her husband, “I met him later in life and it’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That man is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
March 2023
Urban shared a clip from his wedding to Kidman during a show at his second Las Vegas residency. He had been performing his song “Without You.”
“I wanted to do it in a very organic way and find the right song,” he said. “It was really more about choosing to do that song, ‘Without You,’ and how that felt like the right time for that.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.