Today in 1981: Kix Brooks married his wife, Barbara.

As the story goes, Kix overslept and barely arrived to his Nashville wedding on time. Barbara met her husband in Maine in 1979, before he was pursuing a musical career.

“I’m from Boston, but I moved to Maine after college and had a fabric store there,” Barbara Brooks recalls. “Kix was there, having left his native Louisiana to help his sister and brother-in-law at their fledgling ad agency.”

Even though Kix Brooks left Maine the following year to follow his musical dreams, their relationship survived the long distance, and Barbara Brooks moved to Nashville a year later. They married in 1981, but it would be a while before Brooks & Dunn really made it big; in the beginning, Brooks was known as a songwriter — before Brooks & Dunn’s hits “Brand New Man” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” hit the airwaves in the early ’90s.

The couple are still happily married, 38 years later.