When Michael Ray and Carly Pearce walked into a Nashville Cracker Barrel the night of Thanksgiving, the newlyweds never imagined they would end up eating dinner with a stranger. Ray opened up about the experience on social media, along with a photo of an 89-year-old man named Bill, for whom the couple helped make sure it was a holiday he would never forget.
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“Let me introduce y’all to Bill,” Ray wrote on Instagram, along with a couple photos of the octogenarian. “We flew home and decided to have Thanksgiving dinner at [Cracker Barrel] tonight. We saw him sitting alone and asked if he would like to sit and have Thanksgiving dinner with us, not knowing the blessing he was going to be. We sat and for 4 hrs listened to Bills 89 year story, learned about his wife Alice that passed away 2 years ago and how they met and the life that they lived. Learned about his love of books, the stars and classical music and so many other incredible things until we looked around and he said I think we are the only ones here haha.
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“Bill eats slow, drinks his coffee black and loves ham a lot more than turkey, puts a cup holder over his coffee to keep it hot for longer and doesn’t like that AT&T keeps getting more and more expensive,” the post continued. “He knows a little about a lot of things but I don’t think he knows how much this meant to CP and I. We cherished every sec and let him just talk. He put so much in perspective for us both. Bill and us now have dinner plans in Jan.”
Pearce also wrote about the experience on her social media page as well, praising Ray for his kind heart.
“Decided to have [Thanksgiving] dinner when we got back to Nashville & saw this sweet guy sitting alone,” Pearce wrote. “We invited him to join us and closed down [Cracker Barrel] talking all about his 89 years of life. Thank you God for all the blessings and for my sweet husband who loves these moments as much as I do. My heart is so full.”
Ray and Pearce were likely flying back from Florida, since Pearce previously revealed they would spend their first major holiday as a married couple with her new husband’s family.
“We did the holidays last year together, so we’re flip-flopping this year,” Pearce told her record label. “It’s gonna be Thanksgiving in Florida with Michael’s family and Christmas with my family in Alabama. But we’re lucky that we have family that completely understands and gets it, and hopefully one day when we have kids, we can combine ’em all and it’ll be great.”
Photo Credit: Getty / Taylor Hill
