Grace Whitfield & Luke Barrett

Grace had grown up outside Knoxville. Luke had moved from Asheville in his twenties and produced out of a converted warehouse in East Nashville. They met at a time when both of them were recovering from divorces — hers from a marriage that had ended amicably, his from one that had not.

Their first date was a Tuesday morning pancake at a small diner off Gallatin. They compared neighborhoods, church upbringings, and very different opinions on Dolly Parton’s catalog. By the time Grace had to leave for her shift they had agreed that their second date would not be "a date" at all, just a weekend afternoon at Radnor Lake.

They married the following spring in a small chapel outside Franklin. Luke wrote a song for the day; Grace nearly made him cut it, then relented.