For Country Power Couple, Family Comes First

When the tour got to Pennsylvania, McGraw borrowed a Jeep from a local crew member and took Hill for a romantic drive, eventually pulling over and talking about whether their relationship was going to be The Relationship. McGraw didn't propose right then, Hill says, "but it was the moment of truth: Are we going to be adults and handle this in an adult way, or are we having fun for a while? Realizing that we both do the same thing for a living, and that in this business, unfortunately, marriage is not always a priority.

"I knew this about him, and he knew this about me: that we were going to take it seriously, that marriage and family was the most important thing in both of our lives -- that family would always be first in our life. We just had to make sure we were on the same path.

"We knew it was going to be challenging down the road, the scheduling, that we were going to have to probably let some things go that normally we would have done had we been single," Hill says with a laugh. "But we were okay with that. As long as we kept the same goals in play, we would make it through and it wouldn't be as difficult as sometimes people make it out to be."

Seven months after their Jeep excursion, McGraw and Hill were married in Rayville, La., at his aunt's home, with Hill in a designer wedding dress -- and bare feet. Three years ago, Hill gave that very same Jeep to McGraw as a birthday present.

"I thought it was amazing that she tracked it down and bought it," McGraw says. "That day just meant so much to us -- that's the day that changed our relationship. We take a ride every anniversary in it."

"Isn't that cool?" Hill asks. "It's not very often you get a true story about something like that."

For both, hits just kept coming, and so did little McGraw-Hills: Gracie in 1997, Maggie in 1998, Audrey in late 2001. Surely the girls had some fascinating "what I did on my summer vacation" stories after last year's massive tour?

"We must rank pretty high on their list, though our oldest daughter, Gracie, just turned 10 and informed us that this could be it for her," Hill says with a laugh. " 'I'm done after this summer of touring!' and that's probably going to be the case. They're getting old enough now that they're starting to form strong bonds with their friends, and they really want to be around them during the summer to spend time with them and do regular things."

Hill says: "The last time I'd gone on the road was the original 'Soul2Soul' [in 2000]. I had missed it, and I was thankful for the break, but I was working. It wasn't literally six years off not working!"

She kept recording, of course, and had some other projects, including a role in the Nicole Kidman-starring remake of "The Stepford Wives," but Hill and McGraw's priorities have always been clear: Family is first, second and third. Their tours are arranged around school schedules: The tours are mostly summer affairs, when their daughters are on vacation. During the school year, Mom and Dad, who long ago made a pact not to be apart for more than three days, take turns driving the girls to school and picking them up.

"With three kids, and school, and Girl Scouts, gymnastics and softball and basketball [McGraw coaches these last two] -- that's why we only tour in summer," McGraw explains. "The rest of the year we're just taxi drivers with a credit card."

According to McGraw, it's not a question of balance, but of family priorities. "We have a list of everything that our family has to do -- children-wise, individual-wise, husband-and-wife-wise -- and we update it every month, and that's the first thing on the list. We hand it in to both our management offices and say, 'This is what we're having to do this month, anything that we do work-wise has to negotiate around these things.' "

"We love doing what we do," Hill adds. "We love more being a family and being normal and being Mom and Dad -- that's our pleasure in life, doing the things we do every day."

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill

Appearing Saturday at Verizon Center

Together again: They've made movies separately (his include "Friday Night Lights" and "Flicka") and recordings together, but they have yet to make a film together. "We've talked about it," says Hill, adding, "we really don't want to do a movie together where we're lovers; we'd like to be brother and sister or something crazy." ("Or arch enemies," McGraw suggests.) "There's been a lot of opportunities but it's just not been right," Hill says. "You have to be very careful because it could be the worst decision we would ever make, and we'd never want it to change our relationship. The great thing about doing a movie together would be that we'd both get to work and still be together."