They Chose Love: Two Nashville Stars Who Built Their Families Through Adoption

Not every family story starts the way you plan. For these two artists, the path to parenthood took unexpected turns, required extraordinary patience, and ended up producing something more beautiful than either of them could have scripted on their own.

Sheryl Crow: Building a Family Her Own Way

After a string of relationships that did not work out, including romances with Owen Wilson, Eric Clapton, and Lance Armstrong, Sheryl Crow made a decision that required letting go of the picture she had always painted for her life. "I had to let go of this picture I'd always painted about my life, about how it was going to be set up with a husband, a house, and all that," she said. "At the time I was considering adopting, everything else had sort of not worked."

Crow adopted her first son, Wyatt, as a newborn in 2007, becoming a mother for the first time at 45 years old. She had moved from Los Angeles to Nashville the year before and was rebuilding her life in a quieter, more grounded way. Three years later she adopted Levi, and waited until Wyatt was three before bringing his little brother home. "It's better to have three broken engagements than three divorces," she said with characteristic wit about her road to single motherhood.

She established a firm three-night rule from the beginning, refusing to be away from her boys for more than three nights unless she took them with her. "Adopting my boys, that's just been the biggest everlasting event that has informed everything," she has said. Both sons are now teenagers, musical, and apparently very good at telling their mother she is cringey on TikTok. In November 2023, when Sheryl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Wyatt and Levi were standing right beside her. She looked out at the crowd and said, "There is nothing that can compare to the joy and love you've given my life and nothing I do means anything without you guys."

Thomas Rhett and Lauren: A Uganda Trip That Changed Everything

Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins met in first grade, dated through high school, and married in 2012. By 2016 they had been trying to start a family without success when Lauren joined a nonprofit mission trip to Uganda. In a children's home there, she met an orphaned baby girl named Willa Gray and came home knowing something had shifted.

When Thomas Rhett saw a photo of Lauren holding the baby, he told her they should adopt her. The complicated international adoption process was already underway when Lauren discovered she was pregnant. What happened next is the kind of story that stops people cold. They completed the adoption of eighteen-month-old Willa Gray in May 2017, and their first biological daughter Ada James was born just three months later. In the span of one summer, they went from hoping to become parents to raising two daughters at the same time.

Lauren has spoken openly about what drove the decision. "My heart has always been driven to that," she said. "It just started as this calling in my life, to speak for these children who don't have a voice. This is what I was really here to do." Thomas Rhett and Lauren have since welcomed three more children, most recently son Brave Elijah in February 2026, bringing their family to five kids. Willa Gray, the little girl from a children's home in Uganda, started all of it. Read Thomas Rhett's full bio on our website.

Two very different roads to the same destination. A newborn whose mother made an announcement on a blog. A baby in a Uganda children's home. Both arrived in the arms of someone who had been waiting for exactly them.