Almost 20 years ago, Australian history was made when Nicole Kidman first locked eyes with suave country singer Keith Urban in 2005 at G’Day LA.
Now named G’Day USA, the event celebrates Aussie creativity and contribution in the United States and is back on for 2024 this week.
But the event is also where one of Australia’s most iconic love stories first began.
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Nicole and Urban were introduced to each other at the gala and exchanged numbers. A year later, their whirlwind romance took a perfect turn when they tied the knot in Manly.
But according to the Aussie actress, it took Urban four months to actually pick up the phone and call her after their first meeting.
“I’m like, ‘You didn’t love me at first sight, you didn’t notice me,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes I did but I just didn’t let on,'” Kidman told Ellen DeGeneres in 2013.
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The country singer explained on Andrew Denton’s Interview in 2018 why it took him months to build up the courage to follow up with the Moulin Rouge star.
“Somebody had given me her number and I had it in my pocket for a while. I kept looking at it thinking, ‘If I call this number, she’s going to answer. I don’t know what [to] say’.”
The Parallel Lines singer admitted that he thought Kidman was “way out of my league.”
“I wasn’t in a very healthy place in my life. I’d never have thought she’d see anything in a guy like me,” Urban confessed.
“But at some point I plucked up the courage to call those numbers and she answered, and we started talking and we talked and talked and talked and talked and it was effortless.”
Speaking to Vanity Fairin 2007, the Big Little Lies actress admitted that the pair were both “very lonely people” when they were introduced at the gala.
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Kidman had just come out of a relationship with musician Lenny Kravitz when she met Urban. The pair had been engaged before calling time on their romance in 2004.
“I would probably say that two very lonely people managed to meet at a time when they could open themselves to each other,” Kidman said about her relationship with Urban.
“We were a mixture of frightened and brave.”
After finally getting a call from Urban months later, their romance kicked into high gear with Kidman realising on her 38th birthday she had met the person she would marry.
Urban had turned up to her apartment at 5am on her birthday to bring her flowers, a move the actress told Jimmy Fallon made her a ‘goner’.
On June 2006, the couple married in Sydney a year after their fairytale meet cute.
To mark their 10th anniversary, Urban gave a shoutout to the moment that started it all.
The country star took to social media to share the very first photo of the pair at the G’Day USA Gala back in 2005.
“Our very first photo together 2005, minutes after being introduced to each other,” he captioned the Instagram snap of the young pair, both with long blonde locks at the time.