Cole Swindell: She Had Me at ‘I Do’
When it’s right, it’s right. And so goes the love story of Cole Swindell. Cole popped the question to his girlfriend Courtney Little on their way to Frisco, Texas for ACM week. And the story is the stuff romance is made of.
It’s a big week for Cole. He’s nominated for four Academy of County Music Awards and they’re all for his song “She Had Me At Heads Carolina,” a song he wrote about the song “Heads Carolina, Tails California” made popular by Jo Dee Messina in 1996. Cole says he had the crazy idea for this song because he loved the original and was thrilled to find out the writers were willing to let him work with it.
“Just the idea to do something like that was it was scary. You might not believe it, but I was scared to death. Man, this song that Jo Dee put out was one of my favorites. And obviously, they don’t need any changing. But the fact that the original songwriters were cool enough to let us put a little spin on it and just see what it did, it’s, I don’t know. I never dreamed it would be like this. Now I get to perform it with the original artists, and me and Jo Dee are friends now. After the past year or so, it’s just been been full circle. Been amazing.”
To help celebrate the success of his song, he and his girlfriend Courtney were headed to Frisco, Texas for ACM week. They were en route when he told her he was going to take her out for dinner. Bravo to Cole for knowing Courtney would want to look nice for the engagement photos she knew nothing about. Instead of dinner, Cole brought Courtney to the place where their romance started. The location of the set from the music video they created together in which Courtney plays Cole’s love interest. It’s a situation of life imitating art and it ends with a diamond ring.
“I’d known her for a couple of years and we had just kind of been talking for a while. I figured at that point I was like, I don’t need to be putting anybody else in a video. It’s a love song. So I asked her and if she would be in it, and she did. And that was like literally our first date. We did that and we went out that night and just we’ve been together ever since. Pretty crazy.”
