Garth Brooks

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Country Stars To Wed Country music star Garth Brooks has proposed to singer Trisha Yearwood on stage in front of 7,000 fans. The reclusive singer, 43, popped the question to his girlfriend after a statue of him was unveiled at the Legends In Bronze event in California on Wednesday - and Yearwood readily accepted. Yearwood struck up a relationship with chart-topping Brooks after working as his backing vocalist 15 years ago. Yearwood will be Brooks's second wife, and fans hope the forthcoming marriage will be third time lucky for Yearwood, 40, who has been married twice before. Other country celebrities honored with statues at the ceremony included Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2005-05-27/

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EOnline.com

 

ATTENTION WAL-MART SHOPPERS: Garth Brooks signing an exclusive multiyear deal with Wal-Mart, making the chain and its Sam's Club and Walmart.com the only places where his music will be commercially available.

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Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood Wed

Saturday Dec 10, 2005 10:15am EST

Saturday Dec 10, 2005 10:05pm EST (updated)

By Stephen M. Silverman

 

Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood

CREDIT: TAMMIE ARROYO / AFF

Country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood married in Oklahoma on Saturday, Brooks's publicist has told Access Hollywood.

"It's the perfect Christmas gift to each other. We could not be happier," Brooks said in a statement.

 

News first began circulating about their impending nuptials when they filed for a marriage license in Oklahoma's Rogers County in Claremore on Friday morning.

 

In May, PEOPLE reported, Brooks popped the question before a crowd of 7,000 screaming fans at the unveiling of a bronze statue of himself at Buck Owens's Crystal Palace, a country-music complex run by the former Hee Haw star in Bakersfield, Calif.

 

Brooks, 43, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight since announcing his retirement in 2000, strolled onstage with Yearwood's hand in his. After yanking off a gold cloth to reveal the 8'-tall statue, Brooks pointed out a curious detail on the sculpture's left hand: a wedding band he had asked artist Bill Rains to include. Realizing what was happening, Yearwood, 41, pouted playfully and said, "You're not going (to do this) in front of these people?"

 

He did. Brooks whipped off his hat, got down on his right knee and asked, "Will you marry me?" Yearwood instantly said yes and dabbed away a tear.

 

Despite living with Brooks in recent years, the bride-to-be was completely taken by surprise, according to people who watched her backstage afterward. "Her knees were like Jell-O," said Jerry Hufford, talent coordinator for the Palace. "She was totally stunned."

 

At a May 18 Las Vegas press conference for the Academy of Country Music Awards, Brooks, clearly having the marriage proposal in mind, hinted at an upcoming event that he said would rank emotionally with the births of his daughters with ex-wife Sandy Brooks, 40: Taylor, now 12, August, 11, and Allie, 8. Garth and Sandy were married in 1986 and divorced in 2001.

 

Brooks and Yearwood first met in the late 1980s when Yearwood was an opening act on Brooks' tour, and this will be the second marriage for him and the third for her.

 

Her previous husbands were musicians Chris Latham (to whom she was married from 1987-91) and Robert Reynolds (1994-2000). Both unions ended in divorce. She has no children.

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GARTH BROOKS - BROOKS TO PLAY FIVE SHOWS IN 30 HOURS

 

Country star GARTH BROOKS will play all five of his sold-out Los Angeles charity shows in under 30 hours due to scheduling conflicts with the city's top basketball teams. The singer made Staples Center history on Saturday (01Dec07) when all 85,000 tickets for his January (08) concerts sold out in just 59 minutes. But he'll have to race through shows so as not to upset the schedules of the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers, who both use the Staples Center as their home court. The proceeds from the shows will benefit the California 2008 Fire Relief Campaign, and go towards helping those left homeless by the recent wildfires.

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Trisha Yearwood Hits Bestseller List

 

 

Chart-topping country star Trisha Yearwood has scored another success – as a bestselling author.

 

Her new cookbook, Trisha Yearwood's Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen, hit No. 3 on the New York Times Bestseller List this week in the "Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous" category. It's the week's top selling cookbook. In a statement, Yearwood said she was "overwhelmed" by the response.

 

Co-authored with her mother, Gwen, and sister Beth, the book began as a scrapbook of favorite family recipes put together for Trisha, 43, when she moved to Oklahoma to live with husband Garth Brooks, 46. Specialties include Gwen's Fried Chicken with Milk Gravy, Daddy's Biscuits and Just-Married Pound Cake.

 

The first-time author told PEOPLE earlier this year, "I love to cook – it's second to music, my greatest passion. You make a dish and serve it and everybody goes, 'Oh my gosh it's the best!' and you feel like you've been given a standing ovation!"

 

Her secret ingredient? "Garth always says it's about cooking with love," Yearwood said. "He said that food just tastes better when you can tell someone that loves you made it. It's true!"

 

Yearwood – whose favorite recipe is for Thanksgiving Cornbread Dressing – joked that the book was as much for her own family as for anyone else. "My mother and sister and I had so many recipes that we all loved that weren't written down," she said. "So even if nobody but my mom bought this book, it's just good to get these all in one place!"

 

 

Source: People

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Trisha Yearwood: Simple, Filling Cookin' with Garth

 

 

When Trisha Yearwood was asked to write a cookbook, she didn't have to look any further than her husband, Garth Brooks.

 

"He's a really good cook," Yearwood, whose new book, Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood, hits stores April 6, 2010. "He has a couple recipes in there that he actually made up, like Garth's Breakfast Bowl. It's just eggs, cheese, bacon, sausage, tortellini and hash browns. Sometimes he even makes French fries and throws them in there!"

 

And, filling as it sounds, Yearwood – whose first cookbook, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen, hit the best-seller list – dares diners not to eat the whole thing.

 

 

"You tell him, 'I can't possibly eat all this,' and then embarrassingly, you'll eat the whole bowl," she says. "It's a favorite."

 

Other stand-out recipes culled from family gatherings and get-togethers at their home include a key lime cake and a crock pot mac-and-cheese that's "really easy. You just need macaroni, butter and cheese, let it sit for three hours and you don't have to do anything."

 

That laidback attitude is a mantra for Yearwood, 45, who wrote her new book with the help of her mom and sister.

 

"Simple is better," she says. "I almost never make stuff out of cookbooks because they're either too complicated or there's an ingredient in there that I can't find. This book is for people who don't cook a lot because they're intimidated."

 

And perhaps those who want to discover the joy in cooking for loved ones.

 

"When I make something for Garth, he says, 'I've never had cooking in my life that tastes this good!'" she says with a laugh. "And I think he makes better coffee than me – he jokes that it's because he makes it out of love. I really do think that's true."

 

Source People

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Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood Celebrate Anniversary at McDonald's

 

As far as anniversaries go, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood must have to be "lovin' it."

 

Brooks, who came out of retirement and officially began his 5-year run of shows at Wynn Las Vegas on Saturday, had a fancy dinner planned to celebrate his 4th anniversary with Yearwood, but suddenly that meal became McDonald’s French fries.

 

"That was our anniversary dinner," he told reporters Friday at Wynn Las Vegas, where – sporting jeans, sweatshirt and a baseball hat – Brooks played an acoustic set Saturday that included his influences (Bob Segar, James Taylor and George Strait) as well as his own songs, including "The River" and "Shameless."

 

Brooks, 47, said the dinner was supposed to include his kids, whom he says also "got married" to Yearwood in 2005.

 

"We had a big night planned and at the last minute they moved the youngest one's Christmas carol program to that night," Brooks said. "I promised them a big, fancy dinner, but we went and grabbed McDonald's fries and went home."

 

Source People

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Pop & Hiss

THE L.A. TIMES MUSIC BLOG

Garth Brooks bypasses glitz and shows genius in Vegas

December 13, 2009 | 11:04 am

 

Every showroom owner in town here has to be kicking himself or herself after Garth Brooks' return to public performance over the weekend.

 

"You mean instead of pumping 12 gazillion dollars into a blowout production," they're surely asking today, "I could have packed them in to see a middle-aged guy in a hoodie sweatshirt, baggy jeans, work boots, a baseball cap" -- a promotional one at that -- "and one guitar?"

 

There's real genius at work on a couple of fronts in Brooks' new gig, not the least of which is how utterly anti-Vegas it is. It's got not an ounce of glitz, and that's the selling point: just Brooks -- the top-selling solo act in pop music history -- up close and very personal in the intimate 1,500-seat Encore Theatre at Steve Wynn's namesake hotel and casino.

 

On the business side, that also translates into pure profit -- after, of course, subtracting the 12 gazillion dollars Wynn undoubtedly is paying Brooks to spend 15 weekends a year at his place for the next five years, if all goes according to plan.

 

At Saturday's late show, the freshly unretired 47-year-old country superstar noted that he'd been in Memphis that day watching one of his daughters play soccer in a championship playoff game, after which he hopped aboard the private jet Wynn threw in to get him to his nighttime gig about 1,400 miles away.

 

"I can have it all," he told the audience through a broad Cheshire Cat grin. That means while continuing to attend to the demands of his three daughters' school and extracurricular activities, he still gets "to do what I think God put me down here to do. . . . Thank you, Steve, for letting me get to live this way."

 

Absent the spit, polish, shine and special effects that typify entertainment in Vegas, Brooks' show gives fans more than they could dream of, down to taking requests -- for his own and others' songs -- and openly exploring the genesis of those he did write, jumping with apparent spontaneity wherever the moment takes him.

 

That began Saturday with the traditional country foundation he traced to his father, acknowledged in snippets of songs by George Strait and Merle Haggard, to the '60s and '70s rock that's also strongly influenced his music: Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Jim Croce and, heaven help us, Dave ("Please Come To Boston") Loggins. So after a few verses and choruses of a song from each of various heroes, he segued into "The River," his 1991 song -- written with Victoria Shaw -- that exhibits more of the folk rockers' introspective philosophizing than the country icons' penchant for lyrics that snap.

 

It's a canny strategy that for better (mostly) or worse (sporadically) plays to Vegas crowds' appetite for hits, regardless of who they belong to, as well as Brooks' genuine desire to dissect his own music.

 

The danger is that as time goes on, the formula could devolve into karaoke night with Garth. But his obvious enthusiasm for live performance surmounted that hurdle Saturday, and presumably his schedule of only four shows per sporadic weekend will prevent him from falling into rote regurgitation.

 

At his October news conference announcing the deal with Wynn, Brooks said he might bring along a guest every now and then. On Saturday, not surprisingly, it was his wife, singer Trisha Yearwood.

 

They collaborated magnetically on their hit "In Another's Eyes," then he acted as though he had to cajole her into singing "Walkaway Joe," her hit duet with Don Henley. He grimaced at a couple of clams he hit while accompanying her on guitar; she shot him exasperated glances without dropping a beat in the song, the happy couple flirting with taking over as a modern day Sonny and Cher.

 

Do we really believe it was as much of a struggle as Brooks let on to honor requests for deep catalog material such as "Mr. Midnight"? Given the occasional flub, he was nothing if not sincere. When one woman shouted for "The Change," he briefly fiddled with his guitar before conceding, "No, I can't play it" -- then set the instrument aside and delivered a couple of verses a cappella.

 

Country music may now be dominated by younger, hunkier stars like Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban, but there's still nobody who works a crowd like Brooks. Now that he's back on the job, it's obvious he intends to let no fan walk out of one of his shows with anything remotely approaching a discouraging word.

 

"Guys," he said to the crowd about 90 minutes into a set that eventually ran well past the two-hour mark, "I have missed this."

 

Garth, the feeling's mutual.

 

-- Randy Lewis

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Garth Brooks Sues: Hospital Made $500,000 Error

 

Garth Brooks is waging a bitter legal war against a hospital in his hometown, demanding the Oklahoma hospital return a $500,000 donation he made because it never named a building after his mother.

 

It's all over a deal Garth claims he made with Integris Canadian Valley Regional hospital in Yukon, Oklahoma about four years ago. In his lawsuit, filed in state court in Oklahoma, Garth claims his donation was supposed to go towards a new hospital building that would be named after his mother Colleen -- who died from cancer in 1999.

 

But the building never got built -- despite a $27 million renovation and expansion project last year -- and Garth wants his money back claiming the hospital breached the donation contract.

 

The hospital claims it's all a giant misunderstanding and hopes the dispute will reach a "swift and amicable end."

 

Source TMZ