October 2026 will mark 30 years since country music superstar duo Tim McGraw and Faith Hill tied the knot. Three decades, three daughters, and more than 30 Academy of Country Music Awards, the couple’s romantic chemistry is still palpable. That spark has also translated well into the studio, with McGraw and Hill recording numerous duets together over the years. On July 12, 1997, their song “It’s Your Love” entered its sixth week atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart—something no artist had accomplished since Waylon Jennings two decades earlier.
Released in May 1997 as the lead single from McGraw’s album Everywhere, “It’s Your Love” was the first song to hold the top spot for six weeks or more since Jennings’ 1977 hit “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”.
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The song, written by Stephony Smith, also marked the first duet by a married couple to top the country chart since 1990.
No other single would achieve this milestone for another 26 years, when Kane Brown and wife Katelyn hit number one in February 2023 with “Thank God”.
How This Faith Hill Collaboration Changed Tim McGraw’s Life
Although “It’s Your Love” wasn’t pitched to Tim McGraw as a duet, he instantly knew that he wanted to record it with Faith Hill.
“We were dating at the time and we were in the middle of a tour together,” the 11-time CMA Award winner recalled to American Songwriter in a 2012 interview.
“I remember I had a place out in Leiper’s Fork [a rural community outside of Nashville] and the bus was sitting there. Missy [Gallimore] showed up with that song and we went to the back of the bus to listen. I instantly knew I was going to cut it. I played it for Faith and told her I wanted her to sing on it. We both really felt like we had something.”
They were right. “It’s Your Love” swept the Academy of Country Music Awards, winning single, song, video, and vocal event of the year.
Additionally, it won Vocal Event of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards, also scoring a pair of Grammy nods for Best Country Collaboration and Best Country Song.
Beyond the song’s commercial success however, “It’s Your Love” is also special to McGraw for personal reasons. Hill was pregnant while shooting the song’s music video in Los Angeles, carrying the couple’s oldest daughter, Gracie.
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“That was just such a special time and a special moment, the beginning of a long relationship,” McGraw said in an August 2023 interview. “I always look back on that as something that not only changed my musical world, but changed my life.”
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