Keith Urban’s 2024 Speech About His Wife, Nicole Kidman, Resurfaces Following Separation Announcement: “20 Years That I’ve Been Madly In Love With You”

Calling it quits after almost 20 years.

Yesterday, news broke that Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman had separated and as TMZ reported, the two have been living apart since the beginning of summer when Keith moved out. Sources tell the news outlet that Nicole has been taking care of their two children and is “holding the family together through this difficult time since Keith has been gone.”

The source added that Kidman was trying her hardest to save the marriage, making Urban’s decision to move out one-sided, saying:

“She didn’t want this. She has been fighting to save the marriage.”

Of course, you never know what’s really going on behind closed doors, but the two of them always appeared very much in love, and they often spoke publicly about their seemingly strong marriage and life together.

They share two daughters, Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14, and it’s just heartbreaking all-around, especially for their kids.

While it appears as though the marriage is over and heading towards a divorce, just last year, in April 2024, Urban gave an incredibly beautiful speech about his wife at the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala, where Kidman was the honoree, that has resurfaced since the announcement yesterday.

Urban recalled the two of them meeting  in 2005 during the G’Day USA gala in Los Angeles. Urban talked about his wife’s “otherworldly era,” saying he was incredibly nervous to talk to her and felt like he was meeting a “real life princess.” He eventually worked up the nerve to ask for her number, though it still took him a while to actually call her.

Once he did, their connection was instant and the rest is history. They were married the following year in 2006:

“I was trying to play it cool, but inside, I felt like I had snuck into the royal ball. Simply because Nic has such a truly otherworldly era about her, and I felt a bit like I was meeting a real life princess… and despite all of that, I did manage to get her phone number on a tiny piece of paper, and I carried that number in my pocket for well over a week.

I’d pull it out and look at it… I was just scared. I was nervous to call her, and as prone as I might have been at the time to all sorts of delusional thinking, even I couldn’t stretch that to think this extraordinary would ever see anything in a guy like me. And that’s not me being humble, that’s literally how I saw myself and her. I did, as you’ve probably figured out, work up the courage to finally call her.

We started talking, and we just talked and talked like we’d known each other our whole lives. It turned out that this mystic creature was really just a wide eyed, vivacious, giddy girl from the Sydney suburbs, and despite being born in Honolulu, she was utterly Aussie through and through.”

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for very long, though. Just four months into their marriage, Keith said his addictions, which he admittedly had done “nothing about” at that point, became too much to handle, and he found himself in rehab. Of course, he wasn’t sure how they would get through that:

“Blew our marriage to smithereens. I went into the Betty Ford center for three months, four months into a marriage, I’m in rehab for three months. I had no idea what was going to happen to us. And if you want to see what love in action really looks like, give that a whirl.

Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are tonight, 18 years later.”

He continued to gush about what an amazing person Nicole is, and how much he loves being around her:

“That’s the thing about Nic. She loves, and she loves life. I’ve actually never met anyone who has such a passion for being alive. She’s got a bit of ready, fire, aim about her. Thank God, because it’s fun as hell to be around, because anything can happen at any moment.

She’s endlessly curious, she dives in headfirst and she follows with little to no thinking at all of the consequences. Perfect. It’s so pure in all the right ways, and she’s also preserved her inner little girl beautifully, admirably. Consequently, Nic’s not jaded, she’s not cynical, she’s definitely not complacent, and she’s not afraid to be afraid. I mean that professional and personally.

If something, someone, some story speaks to her in some way, she wants to explore it, so even her film choices have a sort of a zigzag pattern to them.” 

He talked about what a great communicator she is with her family, and how she was doing it all by herself, living alone in an apartment in New York City when they met. She told him she didn’t need anyone to take care of her, and he assured her that he knew that, but he wanted to prove to her that she didn’t have to.

He closed it by saying how “madly in love” he’s been with her for nearly two decades:

“She has a capacity to love like no one I’ve ever met. and I know tonight is all about her body of work so far, so far, baby. But next year will be 20 years that I’ve been madly in love with you. Congratulations, baby girl. I love you.”

I mean, I can’t… how can that kind of love really end? Of course, like I mentioned, you obviously never really know what’s going on in someone’s marriage, and I don’t typically care at all about celebrity relationships, but this one stings a little, I can’t lie.

The full speech is available below, and it’s obvious that even if they do ultimately divorce, the love they had for each other was very real and pure, and it was beautiful.

The post Keith Urban’s 2024 Speech About His Wife, Nicole Kidman, Resurfaces Following Separation Announcement: “20 Years That I’ve Been Madly In Love With You” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.