Kimberly Schlapman kept a secret about her marriage for 19 years.
The Little Big Town singer revealed she and husband Stephen Schlapman eloped six months before their wedding in November 2006.
The 55-year-old musician kept the elopement a secret from her parents and children for nearly two decades before choosing to open up about the moment on live TV.
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“When we talked about this earlier, I started shaking, my hands started shaking. I got really nervous,” Kimberly admitted during Tuesday’s episode of the “Today” show. “I was like, ‘I do have a story,’ but, like, four people on the whole earth know about it. Not my parents, not my mama and daddy.”
Before the episode aired, Kimberly called her parents to share the secret before spilling the beans on TV.
“I was like, ‘Mama, is Daddy there? Can he hear me? I have to tell you something,'” she recalled. “And I told her, and she was like, ‘What?!’ And then, finally, I got more nervous and nervous, and then she started giggling. And I was like, ‘OK.’ So Schlap and I got married — my husband, I call him Schlap, our last name is Schlapman.
“My late husband’s name was Steve. This one’s name is Steve. I can’t call both of my beautiful men Steve, so this is Schlap. So Schlap and I got married November 2006, but six months earlier we eloped to Vegas.”
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The two told “almost no one” about the elopement.
“We planned it,” Kimberly revealed. “We planned it because we were meeting some family out at the big beautiful lake out there. So, Schlap was like, ‘What if we go a day early to get married.’ And I was like, ‘I’ve never done anything bad!’ And I was like, ‘Yes, yes.’
“And we kept the secret a really long time. And then — this was back when we were booking hotel rooms with Little Big Town — I had to tell Karen [Fairchild] because I wanted a hotel room with my husband. And so she knew and, like one other person, I told my sister.”
Kimberly said it felt “nice to be free” of her marriage secret, despite “still shaking” over revealing she kept it to herself for nearly two decades.
The couple’s formal wedding took place in November 2006. Kimberly and Steve share two daughters, Daisy Pearl and Dolly Grace.
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Kimberly was previously married to Steven Roads, who died from a heart attack in 2005. The country music singer wasn’t planning on falling in love after losing her first husband but eventually allowed herself to move on.
“My husband now and I were just really good friends, and after my late husband died, all my friends were calling me all the time. Just checking up on me,” she told The Boot in 2013. “[Stephen Schlapman] was just an old friend. We had known each other for about six years, and he started calling me just like everybody else did. But he started calling me more than everybody else did.
“I was shocked. I remember when I first realized that I was having feelings, I just thought, ‘OK, this is so weird. What is this? I haven’t felt this in a long, long time,'” Kimberly added. “But eventually I allowed myself, and it’s been the most beautiful gift of my life. It pulled me out of the deepest hole that I’ve ever been in and healed me.”
