Lyle Lovett married his wife April Kimble in 2017

Singer is a married dad to twins, and he’s grateful for every moment of fatherhood.

Lovett, who was almost 60 years old when his children were born in 2017, has been in a relationship with their mother since 1997.

Lovett married April Kimble the same year the two welcomed their twins. They have both guarded their privacy throughout the years, and little is publicly known about Kimble and the family’s life together. Still, what has been shared was largely done through Lovett’s 2022 album 12th of June, which is named after the date the children were born.

The project featured the song “Her Loving Man,” which is a tribute to Kimble. In the tune, Lovett mentions that she has been wise and understanding as they’ve navigated different chapters of their lives together. Through it all, the singer-songwriter says in the track, he is still dedicated to “worshipping her.”

So who is Lyle Lovett’s wife? Here’s everything to know about April Kimble and her relationship with the country star.

They married in 2017

Lovett and Kimble reportedly wed in 2017, but their relationship began years before that. According to U.K. newspaper , the pair met all the way back in 1997 and got engaged in 2003.

Lovett was previously married to Julia Roberts from 1993 to 1995, and it’s believed that her relationship with the singer was Kimble’s first marriage.

In February 2022, actress posing with the couple on her Instagram page, after they had attended her performance of the play, Ann, about former Texas governor, Ann Richards, at the ZACH Theatre in Austin, Texas.

“If you’re playing Ann Richards, this guy in your corner is a genuine thrill! @lyle_lovett. Here seen backstage at @zachtheatre in Austin with his bride April Kimble,” Taylor, 81, wrote in part in the post’s caption at the time.

They welcomed their twins in 2017

Lovett and Kimble guard their private lives fiercely: The pair welcomed their twins on June 12, 2017, a date that the singer immortalized in his 2022 album 12th of June.

While promoting the record, Lovett spoke to about the meaning of the album’s title track and how it connected to experience of fatherhood.

“At the core of it, really, is just being grateful for family and finally having a chance to be a dad after all these years — and also being sort of grateful for not realizing what I was missing all this time,” he told the outlet.

Lovett continued, “It really is a looking back on your life perspective and then just feeling grateful to have these little ones and grateful I’ve had my parents and my family that got me to this point.”

The performer echoed that sentiment in an interview with . While he was nearly 60 when the twins were born, Lovett hasn’t let his age slow him down as a dad.

He told the outlet, “It’s wonderful. I mean, I’m so grateful to have had this experience at all. I always imagined having children. But I had absolutely no idea how much I would enjoy it.”

He said that his family is “home”

Lovett and Kimble’s twins are the inspiration behind the singer’s record 12th of June. As he told PEOPLE in May 2022, the then 4-year-olds also inspired at least one of the songs on the album, “Pants Is Overrated.”

He shared, “I made [the song] before the pandemic. I started singing one day as I was trying to convince my then 2-year-olds to put clothes on. And I just thought to myself, they probably have it right.”

“That was the beginning of that song,” he added. “I do think, though, that … then the pandemic happened, right? I may have caused it, but I could have had some help.”

The singer also said that when he thinks of home, he thinks of his wife and their children.

“First, home is family. But in my case, home is this farm place [in east Texas] that my great-great-grandfather came to in the early 1850s,” Lovett recounted. “Home is keeping my family’s place as intact as I can. And teaching my children about this place and their place in the family.”

He wrote “Her Loving Man” about April

Lovett’s 2022 album is about more than parenthood — his songs also focus on his marriage, and the joy he has found with Kimble. In an interview with , he revealed that the song “Her Loving Man” is an ode to his wife.

“I did focus on these particular songs and wanted it really to represent this part of my life because it really is the main thing going on for me,” he said. “I thought, of (the) subjects I can authentically represent, that (fatherhood) really is the best one right now.”

Lovett continued, “I hope one day when my children are old enough to understand those songs and understand what they’re about that they will take from that, that their dad loved them. That’s all I really care about.”

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Eddie Murphy said he’s been the target of “cheap shots” over the years — including a “racist” joke that David Spade told on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” where Murphy had once been a cast member.

Murphy, in an published by the New York Times, said Spade’s joke on “SNL” about his supposedly failing career came after Murphy’s 1995 horror spoof “Vampire in Brooklyn” had flopped at the box office. The hurtful joke was part of Spade’s “Hollywood Minute” sketch from December of that year on the late-night show, in which — after a photo of Murphy popped up on the screen — Spade said, “Look children, it’s a falling star. Make a wish.”

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“It was like: ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re fucking with me like that?’ It hurt my feelings like that,” Murphy told the Times.

Murphy said he thought Spade’s barb was “a cheap shot” and “racist.”

“This is ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I’m the biggest thing that ever came off that show,” he said. “The show would have been off the air if I didn’t go back on the show, and now you got somebody from the cast making a crack about my career? And I know that he can’t just say that. A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career. Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal. It was like, ‘Yo, how could you do that?’ My career? Really? A joke about my career? So I thought that was a cheap shot. And it was kind of, I thought — I felt it was racist.”

After Spade’s roast, Murphy didn’t return to “SNL” for 30 years. He appeared in the show’s 40th anniversary special in 2015 and returned as a host in 2019.

“In the long run, it’s all good,” Murphy told the Times. “Worked out great. I’m cool with David Spade. Cool with Lorne Michaels. I went back to ‘SNL.’ I’m cool with everybody. It’s all love.”

Variety has reached out to Spade’s reps for comment. Spade, in his 2015 memoir “Almost Interesting,” discussed Murphy’s angry reaction to the joke. Spade recalled getting a call from Murphy after the sketch and feeling horrible about his “stupid joke.” “I’ve come to see Eddie’s point on this one,” Spade wrote in the book. “Everybody in showbiz wants people to like them. That’s how you get fans. But when you get reamed in a sketch or online or however, that shit staaaangs. And it can add up quickly.”

In the Times interview, Murphy also recalled the press being “relentless on me, and a lot of it was racist stuff” in the 1980s.

“Just think about it: Ronald Reagan was the president, and it was that America. You would do interviews, and you’re like: ‘I didn’t say that. I don’t talk that way,’” Murphy said. “They would be writing it in this weird ghetto — I used to have weird [expletive] that would go on. Then I got really popular, and there was this negative backlash that comes with it. It’s like, I was the only one out there. I’m this young, rich, Black one. Everybody wasn’t happy about that in 1983. Even Black folks. You’d get cheap shots from your people.”

Murphy will next be seen in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” set to stream worldwide on Netflix starting July 3. Asked why he wanted to return to the franchise, Murphy said he had been trying to develop another “Beverly Hills Cop” film since 1996; he said he thought the 1994 sequel didn’t “come out good.”

“There’s been 10 different scripts and a bunch of different producers, and we just tried for years and years, and it wouldn’t come together until we got Jerry [Bruckheimer] back involved, the original producer,” Murphy told the Times. “Jerry, he understood it the most because it’s his movie, and it all came together.”

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