After Luke Combs met his future wife, Nicole Hocking, he told Nashville Lifestyles that Nicole “was different than anybody I had ever met.”
Nicole and Luke were both at the key west songwriters festival in 2016. She told Shawn Johnson and Andrew East on the couple things podcast that she met Luke while leaving a songwriting event.
As Nicole was walking out, Luke was walking in, and he was late. Nicole is from Florida and was with a group of friends that night.
She noticed that Luke was all alone – and Nicole already knew about Luke through mutual friends back in Nashville. So Nicole admitted that she technically made the first move.
Luke Comb’s Wife Nicole Made the First Move
She told Luke, “Hey, come hang out with us. Why are you by yourself?”And that started a beautiful real-life romance that inspired Luke’s hit song, “Beautiful crazy.”
While Nicole wasn’t a country music celebrity when she met Luke, she worked in the industry at BMIi in Nashville.
BMIi stands for Broadcast Music Inc., and Nicole was a full-time recruiting coordinator. Nicole is also a graduate of Florida Gulf Coast university. She has a degree in civil engineering. Luke has set the record straight on where he was at, career-wise, the night he met Nicole.
He called himself a “starving artist” and also revealed that he looked bad the night he met Nicole, too. Luke claims he was wearing camo gym shorts from Walmart and the oldest t-shirt he owned.
Luke admitted in an interview with NBC’s Willie Geist that he lived in an apartment above a strip mall in Nashville. Downstairs at the strip mall was a Domino’s pizza, a tanning salon, and a country dive bar.
Luke Was a Struggling Artist When the Two Met
Luke said he was a bouncer at the country bar when he began looking for places to perform his live music. He revealed to Willie how hard it was to land his first paying gig, but at least he’d met Nicole, and they had started hanging out whenever they could.
Nicole wasn’t throwing shade when she called Luke “weird.” Nicole told Nashville Lifestyles that she could just hang out and be herself with Luke. She didn’t have to wear makeup, and she could also be her “weird self” with him.
“We’re all weird, but we get to choose who to share that side of us with,” she said. Pretty soon after she began to hang out with Luke in Nashville. Nicole shared that she thought to herself, “You know what? This guy’s a keeper.”
Nicole was actually working two jobs when she met Luke. She worked 40 hours a week at BMI – although Nicole has revealed that “you’re not making that much money” as an office employee in the music industry.
RELATED: What Happened to Kenny Rogers’ Wife
She also worked as a bartender on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to earn extra money. Luke did something super-romantic for Nicole: He wrote a song that was inspired by her: “Beautiful crazy.”
Luke confirmed that the lyrics weren’t just corny things he made up. He wrote them based on things that Nicole actually did.
How Nicole Learned “Beautiful Crazy” Was About Her
When Nicole heard the song for the first time, thought the lyrics sounded really familiar, but she didn’t want to ask Luke if the song was about her. She confessed that she was a little bit shy but also admitted it was awesome to learn the song was, in fact, about her.
Luke said writing the song about Nicole earned him “serious brownie points.” It also became a hit and helped Luke gain country music superstardom. But that’s not the only Luke Combs hit written about Nicole.
Luke hasn’t been afraid to tell the real truth about their relationship through his music. He also wrote “Nothing like you” about Nicole.
The moody lyrics tell another side of their love story. Nicole worked overtime at BMI when Luke wrote the song. He was often out of town, touring the country.
Luke said it was hard to be away from Nicole so much, but the bright spot was he knew he was coming back to her. November 14, 2018 was a proud night for Luke. He appeared at the CMAs for the first time, with Nicole by his side – and he won the “New Artist of the Year” award.
Luke and Nicole’s Engagement Story
Soon, Luke and Nicole got engaged. Maybe you saw their engagement pictures taken in Hawaii in November 2018. But as Luke mentioned in his post on social media, he didn’t propose to Nicole in Hawaii.
They’d gotten engaged weeks before, when moving from an apartment in Nashville to their first house outside of town. Nicole had to move their two cats – and the cats did not manage the hour-long car ride too well.
She confessed that she’d never seen her pets so stressed out, which worried her. She was also concerned about her parents flying in the following day for a visit and felt overwhelmed by the things she had to do.
What she didn’t know was that Luke had already called her dad and asked for Nicole’s hand in marriage.
So when they got to their new house late that night, and Nicole had to leave moving boxes everywhere to bathe her stressed-out cats, Luke presented Nicole with new collars for the cats.
The collars had their new address inscribed on them. At the same time, Luke surprised Nicole with her engagement ring. Nicole posted a sincere message on social media about her stunning ring.
“I always said if I was to ever get married, I didn’t want to pick out the ring or go ring shopping,” she said. Nicole wanted her man to see a ring and know it was the one and she confessed that she “never thought a ring could mean so much to her.”
Luke and Nicole got married in southern Florida on August 1, 2020. Although the covid-19 pandemic was a stressful time to plan a wedding, Nicole claims that her pandemic wedding was “cool.”
Even though Nicole and Luke had to un-invite 120 people from their wedding due to pandemic restrictions, they ended up being happy with a small wedding.
The Couple Expanded Their Family
Nicole said it was cool because she and Luke “literally got to talk to everyone that was there and spend time with each of them.” When it came to the couple’s first dance as newlyweds, Luke revealed he was worried that he was being too weird.
He wanted to dance to “Beautiful crazy” – and they did. As Nicole and Luke settled into married life, they added to their family in surprising ways. They adopted a rescue dog named JoJo and also bought chickens for a backyard chicken coop.
Then Luke made a big announcement in January 2022. He posted images on social media and a caption that “lil dude Combs is coming this spring.”
Luke also gave a sweet shout-out to Nicole: “I couldn’t be more excited to start a family with this baby.” Since then, they have had two babies. Their first son, Tex Lawrence, was born on June 19, 2022 and his little brother, Beau Lee, arrived on August 15, 2023.
Nicole is a happy wife and mother, and Luke has always said that when he found Nicole, he “married up.”
