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Garth Brooks Asked For His Ex-Wife’s Blessing Before Proposing To Trisha Yearwood: “The Brakes Would Have Come On”
Classic Garth.
Country music singer Garth Brooks has always had a little quirkiness to him. He's an undoubtable superstar, but he's a little weird. At least from the perspective of a fan. Garth talks about himself in third person, he gets choked up more than anyone on the planet, and he's released some unintentionally scary videos over the years.
That's why people are always asking him where he's hiding the bodies, in case you didn't know.
Occasionally, Brooks pulls back the curtain on his own to let fans learn more about him. He's often done it the most in his Anthology Series, of which the fourth part was just released. The Anthology Part IV: Going Home came out in early December, and this part of the "Garthology" focuses in on the 14 year period that the country music singer spent away from music after his surprise retirement in 2000.
One of the stories he included was the proposal he pulled off for his wife Trisha Yearwood. Like a gentlemen, Brooks first got the permission of Yearwood's parents before he decided to go forward with his proposal plans:
"I have Jack and Gwen all to myself on a plane, and I ask them for their daughter's hand in marriage. This was in the spring of 2005, and I get their permission. And now I have to ask the three daughters."
Trisha also contributed portions of the anthology, and she apparently admitted that she had no clue that all of this was going on. Garth's next step was to talk to his three daughters, whom he had with first and then ex-wife, Sandy Mahl.
Brooks described the conversation with them as follows:
"I tell the girls to get dressed up for dinner. ‘What are we going to dinner for, Dad?’ I said, ‘We’ll go out tonight and I'll tell you.' So, they're ten, eight and six years old at this point. We're eating dinner, and we started talking about the future. And August or somebody said, ‘Dad, are you getting around to ask us about you marrying Trisha?’
And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And they were all fine. I said, ‘But this conversation goes deeper than that. She doesn’t have children, so if something happens to me, you have to take care of her. So, you three and Trisha are going to have to get married, as well. You'll exchange rings, vows, everything.'"
Okay... that's definitely a different way of viewing things, but one could just chalk it up as just a very caring father trying to do best by his daughters. Nothing to really see there.
Though there was a lot to see in the next part. Garth had already asked Trisha's parents for permission, and they said yes. Then he went the extra mile and talked to his daughters, making sure they were all good with it. They gave him the green light. So then, in Garth's mind, there was just one more person to check in with.
His ex-wife Sandy.
Brooks revealed in writing that he asked for Sandy Mahl's blessing to move forward with Trisha Yearwood:
"If Sandy would've said no, then that would've affected a lot of things. The brakes would've came on because we'd have to love together as a family."
And according to Garth, his ex-wife said that it was the "right move for our family." That's a real team-player mindset from Sandy Mahl right there.
After Brooks seemingly asked every person he knew for the blessing to ask Trisha Yearwood to marry him, the country singer finally got to actually asking Trisha in the spring of 2005. Garth had thought up a very unique and special way of asking Yearwood, and it involved a statue revealing of himself at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, California.
At the "Legends in Bronze" event that acted as the nightclub's grand opening, statues of Merle Haggard, George Jones, George Strait and Garth Brooks were to be revealed, among others. During the big reveal, Garth instructed that a wedding ring be on his statue's hand:
"When they unveiled the statue, I took Miss Yearwood's hand. They've already unveiled Haggard, Jones, Strait… I mean this is pretty fricking cool. And I look at Trisha and point to that ring, and it was like everyone was there, but nobody was there but us. And the first thing she did was grab her face and start shaking her head from side to side, and I thought, ‘Oh s--t, did I misread this one?"
Fortunately, Trisha's shaking of her head was more of a disbelief nod. She later explained that she had simply had her breath taken away by the gesture:
"I know it must have scared him to death, but my first reaction was, ‘No! This can’t be happening in front of all these people! But yes! Yes! Yes!'"
And the rest, as they say, is history. Nothing like Garth Brooks using a bronze statue of himself to ask for his wife's hand in marriage.