Nicole Kidman had known Keith Urban for less than six months when she realized he was the love of her life.
After meeting at an event in L.A. in early 2005, they’d grown closer in the ensuing months. And then the country music star made a bold move.
“It was my 38th birthday, and he stood outside with gardenias at 5 a.m. on my stoop in New York,” Kidman, 51, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s cover story.
“That is when I went, ‘This is the man I hope I get to marry.’”
Urban took her to Woodstock, the site of the 1969 music festival, on a motorbike for a getaway (“My kind of guy!” she says), and she’s never looked back.
The way they fell in love “was pretty intense,” says Kidman. “I believed by that point he was the love of my life. Maybe that’s because I am deeply romantic, or I’m an actress, or I have strong faith as well, but I just believed, ‘Oh, okay, here he is.’”
The two married a year later at a romantic wedding in Manly, Australia, and have settled down in Nashville, where they’re happily raising their two daughters, Sunday, 10, and Faith, 8.
Urban shared a similar sentiment in an interview on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s Armchair Expert podcast in September 2020.
“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,” said Urban.