By Brittany Stubbs
Set in and around the capital of the high-stakes country music business, Private Lives of Nashville Wives follows a group of driven women as they navigate their lives through professional challenges, family issues, and social relationships in the South. Award-winning singer-songwriter Gary Chapman and his wife Cassie Piersol Chapman are two stars of TNT’s new reality TV series. With a 23-year age difference, there has been some speculation about the couple’s celebrity marriage, but they’re here to prove that their relationship and love is the real deal.
Cassie Piersol Chapman Opens Up About Celebrity Marriage
The twosome first met on a tiny island in the Bahamas. “I had no idea who he was,” Cassie explains. “Without Internet or cell service on the island, it’s not like I had Google to look him up! I knew he was older than me, but I wasn’t aware that he was 23 years older. At that point though, I didn’t care.” Cassie then moved to Nashville in order to be with her man. “You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
Related Link: Dating with an Age Gap
In Gary, she found a partner who is patient and kind and loves her unconditionally, something she had never felt before. People have given looks and made remarks about her being a gold digger and a trophy wife, but she never lets negative comments phase her. “I don’t care what people say. They can call me whatever they want.”
Despite some criticism from others, the famous couple have truly found more advantages than challenges to their age gap. Gary claims that the reason their relationship and love works so well is because of their personalities and constant support for one another. “We genuinely have met in the middle,” he says of their celebrity marriage. “My life experience is deeper than hers at this point, just because of the calendar, and while I believe she appreciates and enjoys the wisdom I’ve accumulated, she keeps me young and reminds me that if you want to live a happy life, you can’t take everything so seriously.”
One thing that the celebrity couple does take seriously is their desire to have children, something that viewers will see throughout the season. While other Housewives series tend to focus on the drama between women (although we’ll see a little of that too), Nashville Wives shines more light on family dynamics. “The husbands and kids are more involved,” Cassie says in our celebrity interview. “I think it makes the show more relatable and interesting.”
Reality TV Celebrity Couple on Their Adoption
For the Chapman’s, the cameras will capture the emotional and stressful process of adopting their baby girl. Through this life-changing experience, Cassie became an advocate for private adoption. “I want to start a non-profit organization to help birth mothers find adoptive families. It’ll be a private adoption service rather than an agency, because I don’t think a lot of birth mothers know that’s a possibility.” The couple agrees that the private adoption path is a much better process for both the child and the parents. “We have a very open adoption with the birth mother,” Cassie shares. “She visits all the time, within reason, and I love that our daughter will know where she came from.”
Related Link: Hugh Jackman on the Joys of Adoption
Although they are busy being new parents, the duo understands the importance of making time for just the two of them. Making their relationship and love a priority doesn’t always mean having to go out for a date night though. “When we go out, we inevitably end up running into people we know and talking to them, and then suddenly, we’re just waving to one another across the room,” Gary says with a laugh. “We don’t actually end up getting to spend that much time together!” For this reason, they often have more fun just being home. After the baby falls asleep, they enjoy cooking dinner, having a glass of wine, and hanging out on the couch.
It’s not hard to tell these two lovebirds are crazy about each other. Although Gary endured two painful celebrity divorces before meeting Cassie, he didn’t let past wounds keep him from falling in love again. “You have to decide if the experience of falling for someone and having a beautiful relationship is worth the risk of the pain that you know is potentially out there. I made the choice to take that risk, and I’m so glad I did.”
While Gary knows that this marriage will be his last, he definitely hasn’t had his last wedding. The couple, now married for six years, have had four celebrity weddings: a small ceremony that Gary’s father performed, a mountaintop wedding in Breckenridge, Colorado, a ceremony at a Renaissance fair with Cassie’s grandmother, and of course, one in Las Vegas.
Despite all of these ceremonies, the couple is making plans for at least one more. “We’ve yet to have a big, fancy wedding here in town where all of our friends can come,” Gary explains. Though a date hasn’t been set yet, it will be a traditional ceremony. “I want my dad to walk me down the aisle, and my mom to button me up — that kind of thing,” Cassie shares. “I also want our daughter and Gary’s children, my bonus kids, to be a part of the celebration as well.”
Be sure to tune into Private Lives of Nashville Wives every Monday on TNT at 10/9c!
