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If it weren’t for her hit movie Father of the Bride, Kimberly Williams-Paisley may have never married Brad Paisley.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson podcast, Kimberly detailed how her now-husband saw the movie several times — with an ex-girlfriend.
“It was, like, their movie,” she said on the podcast, “And then he moved to Nashville, and she broke his heart.”
Kimberly, 53, starred in the 1991 movie — in which she played a woman getting married while her father (played by Steve Martin) tries to come to grips with losing his little girl — as well as its 1995 sequel.
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Kimberly recounted how her country singer husband loved the film so much that he harbored an idea that maybe, if he went to see the sequel in theaters, he’d run into the ex-girlfriend and the two would get back together, their own “sequel,” she said.
“It was really kind of cute and romantic and maybe naive,” Kimberly said on Sibling Revelry. “So, he went to the same theater where they had their first date, thinking, ‘If she thinks about it the way I’m thinking about it, she’ll also show up to the sequel.’ So he stayed and watched the movie, but she didn’t show up.”
Brad went to see the film on Dec. 28, “which was the date of their first date, so it was a date that they had talked about,” she explained. But he continued to nurse his heartbreak, ultimately moving to Nashville and writing songs about the experience.
“His career launched after that,” Kimberly noted.
The film was so impactful to Brad, she added, that “the ticket stub for Father of the Bride II is in his album art for Part II, which was his second album.”
By 2001, Brad had moved on from the relationship — but was still thinking about the movie.
“He woke up with this idea, like, ‘Oh, I should call that girl who was in Father of the Bride,’ and that’s the story he goes with, but I’m like, maybe he was stalking me somehow?” Kimberly joked, adding that he ultimately asked her to appear in one of his music videos.
She continued: “I wasn’t expecting a country music video, but he literally called a few days later and I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds fun.’ ”
Ultimately, the two started dating before a music video even came to fruition, though Kimberly did bring it up. “We had already been dating for two months and I was like, ‘Whatever happened to that video that you wanted me to do?’ So, I finally did do a video with him [for his song “I’m Gonna Miss Her”], but it took some time.”
The couple tied the knot on March 15, 2003, at the Stauffer Chapel at Pepperdine University. They have two sons together: William Huckleberry, born in 2007, and Jasper Warren, born in 2009.