Keith Urban reveals why he was ‘nervous’ to contact Nicole Kidman after they first met

Keith Urban has candidly reflected on the very early days of his relationship with his now-wife, Nicole Kidman.

The 56-year-old musician took the stage at the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala on Saturday, as the event was in honour of his wife. During his speech, as reported by People,  Urban went on to explain why he was scared to give Kidman a call, after meeting her for the first time.

“I was trying to play it cool, but inside I felt like I’d snuck into the royal ball simply because Nic had such a truly otherworldly aura about her,” he said, referring to how they met in January 2005 during the G’Day USA gala. “I felt a bit like I was meeting a real-life princess.”

Despite his nerves at the time, Urban acknowledged that he did still “manage to get her phone number on a tiny piece of paper” at the 2005 event. However, he said that he left her phone number in his pocket for a bit, until he finally managed to make use of it.

“I was scared. I was nervous to call her,” he explained. “I did, as you probably figured out, pluck up the courage to finally call her.”

Urban pointed out that after giving Kidman a call, he ultimately realised that she was “just a wide-eyed, giddy girl from the Sydney suburbs,” who’s “utterly Aussie through and through”.

Meanwhile, The Big Little Lies star has previously reflected on giving her now-husband her number for the first time. During an appearance on The Ellen Show in 2017, Kidman first recalled that while she met Urban in 2005, they actually didn’t reconnect until months later.

“I remember thinking I had such a crush on him and he wasn’t interested in me,” she said during the interview, as reported by Today. “He didn’t call me for four months.”

Kidman acknowledged that while she didn’t know why Urban waited so long to call her, it didn’t necessarily matter. “We’re here now and it’s all good,” she said at the time. “We don’t need to hash up all that stuff, right?”

Kidman and Urban officially started dating in 2005, before getting married the following year. They went on to have two daughters, Sunday, 15, and Faith, 13, who even made their red-carpet debut at the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala on Saturday. Along with her teenage daughters, Kidman shares two adult children – Isabella, 31, and Connor, 29, – with ex-husband Tom Cruise.

During his speech at the awards ceremony on Saturday, Urban noted that while other famous speakers were “going to talk about Nic’s talent,” he wanted to talk about her kindness. He mentioned how the Eyes Wide Shut star has continued to support him over the years, including when he went to rehab for substance abuse in 2006, only a few months into his marriage.

“I do want to take an opportunity to talk about Nic’s heart and her spirit. We got married in June, 2006 and barely four months into our marriage, my addictions that I’d done really nothing about, blew our marriage to smithereens,” he explained. “And 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.”

He continued to applaud Kidman for staying by his side as he got sober, even amid some of the scrutiny they faced at the time.

“And if you want to see what love in action really looks like, give that a whirl,” he said. “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 added.