Tim McGraw Surprised Faith Hill With Romantic Gesture for Their 23rd Wedding Anniversary

When Tim McGraw and Faith Hill celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary in October, the couple was separated by several time zones, but McGraw wasn’t about to let that get in the way of honoring his wife. Instead, the “Thought About You” singer found a perfect way to express his love to Hill, even though they couldn’t be together.

“I was in Australia, I think, this was the first anniversary we were apart,” McGraw recalled on The Kelly Clarkson Show (via PEOPLE). “We were backstage and I recorded the very first song we ever did together. We did the Spontaneous Combustion Tour where we met when she was opening for me on my very first headlining tour, and we used to do the Tony Rich song ‘Nobody Knows It But Me.’ So I recorded it backstage with the guys and sent it to her.”

McGraw might be romantic now, but his proposal to Hill wasn’t exactly what Hill likely envisioned.

“We were in the dressing room … June 26, 1996,” McGraw previously recounted. “And it was raining and stuff and we’d been on tour for a while together, and I joked around with her about getting married. And so I said … I looked at her, grabbed her by the hand, and dropped forward onstage. She had already done her show and I said, ‘I’m really serious. I want you to marry me.’”

“She said, ‘We’re at a country music festival in a trailer house, and you’re asking me to marry you?’” he continued. “And I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I went on stage.”

Thankfully, Hill was already in love with McGraw, and happily agreed.

“I had in my dressing room this foldout case that had a mirror in it that was my dressing armoire,” McGraw continued. “I still have it to this day. When I came back offstage, [I saw] a Sharpie with lipstick kisses all over it, saying, ‘Yes! I’m gonna be your wife.’ It had, ‘I love you’ with big lipstick kisses.”

It is Hill who McGraw credits for his physical transformation over the last 10 years, after she gave him a stern ultimatum, which he chronicles in his new book, Grit and Grace, out now.

“My emotional absence was noticed and it was not scoring any points,” McGraw wrote. “[Faith] has always offered unconditional love in every situation and never for a second have I doubted her willingness to support whatever step I needed to take to find my way back to health. Yet in that instance, she knew that someone had to lay down the law. Getting real like only she can do, Faith told me, ‘Partying or family, take your pick.’”

Order Grit and Grace by visiting McGraw’s website.

Photo Credit: Getty / John Shearer