A heartbreaking loss. Kellie Pickler’s husband, Kyle Jacobs, was a behind-the-scenes country star in his own right prior to his tragic death at age 49.
On Friday, February 17, the Nashville Police Department told TMZ, who was first to report the news, that they got a call in the afternoon about a man who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the American Idol alum’s property. The Metropolitan Nashville Police later confirmed in a statement to Variety that it was Jacobs had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“Nashville’s Department of Emergency Communications received a 911 call at 1:21 p.m. Friday from a home on Sneed Road in the police department’s West Precinct. Officers and Nashville Fire Department personnel responded and located resident Kyle Jacobs, 49, deceased from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in an upstairs bedroom/office. His death is being investigated as an apparent suicide,” the statement read at the time. “Mr. Jacobs’ wife, Kellie Pickler, reported that she awoke a short time earlier, did not see her husband, and began looking for him. After she and her personal assistant were unable to open the door to the upstairs bedroom/office, the assistant telephoned 911.”
Jacobs may not have lived his life directly in the spotlight like his wife, but he was universally revered as a successful songwriter, guitarist and pianist who cowrote hit songs for country music’s elite. The Minnesota native penned tracks for artists including Kelly Clarkson, Tim McGraw and Garth Brooks, whose single “More Than a Memory” became Jacobs’ first BillBoard Chart No. 1.
When Jacobs first was introduced to Pickler in the earlier 2000s through a mutual friend, he had no hesitation about using his success in the industry as a way to woo the Mistletoe Secret star, revealing to Us Weekly in December 2015 that his first pickup line was, “Hi, I’m Kyle. I’m a songwriter.”
At the time, Pickler joked about her reaction, telling Us, “I was like, ‘Great,’” with an eyeroll. “No, we started writing the next day,” she added.
When the two lovebirds got engaged in June 2010, the “Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful” songstress gushed to Us about how “crazy” she was for Jacobs. “[And he] was “crazy about me … and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else,” she shared.
While the twosome tied the knot in January 2011, Pickler described Jacobs’ proposal as “one of the most special days in my life” while reflecting on the romantic moment seven years later.
“On that date in 2010, Kyle and I were in Rosemary Beach, [Florida], on what he told me was just a ‘vacation’ … That evening, after a romantic dinner, we took a sunset stroll on the beach … Little did I know, he had secretly planted a small wooden box in the sand,” she explained. “The box had a journal that he had written for me, a seashell with my grandmother’s name ‘Faye’ written on it and a beautiful engagement ring,” the musician remembered. “What was so incredible is that Kyle didn’t realize that THAT day, was also my grandmother’s birthday. It was like my beautiful angel, the one I call mom, was giving us her blessing.”
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