<img decoding="async" src="https://rickyskaggs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/01/Ricky-Sharon-2022-by-Russ-Carson-1080x675.jpg" />
<h2>About the song</h2>
<h3 data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Ricky Skaggs &amp; Sharon White Remember the First Time They Met</h3>
Long before Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White became one of country music’s most enduring married couples, they were simply two young musicians whose paths crossed in a world built around songs, touring, family, and faith.
Their story did not begin with a dramatic Hollywood-style romance.
It began with music.
Ricky has recalled that he first met Sharon in 1971, when he was performing with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. At the time, both were still young and building their lives in music. Sharon would eventually become widely known as part of The Whites alongside her father, Buck White, and her sister Cheryl, while Ricky would go on to become one of the defining country and bluegrass artists of his generation.
But at that first meeting, nobody could have known just how important they would become to each other.
What makes their story especially meaningful is that romance was not the first foundation of their relationship.
Friendship was.
Years later, Ricky explained that when they eventually considered dating, they were cautious because they already valued the friendship they had built. They did not want a romantic relationship to destroy something that already mattered deeply to both of them.
Their thinking was simple: if the friendship could naturally grow into something deeper, they were willing to see where it led.
That patience became part of the foundation of their relationship.
Faith also became central.
Ricky has spoken openly about how Sharon and her family helped draw him closer to church. When they spent time together on Wednesdays or Sundays, church often became part of those days. For Ricky, the White family represented a stability and spiritual commitment that deeply influenced him.
What started as two musicians getting to know each other slowly became something much greater.
They married on August 4, 1981.
Even their wedding reflected the role music had played in bringing them together. Rather than using a traditional unity candle ceremony, Ricky and Sharon sang together. Their choice was Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You,” a song that became deeply personal to them.
Sharon later remembered just how emotional that moment was. Singing together during their wedding was far more difficult than they had expected because the meaning behind the words suddenly felt intensely real.
That performance was more than a wedding detail.
It was almost a preview of the life they were about to build.
They would raise a family, experience the pressures of touring and recording, and pursue successful careers while continuing to make music together.
In the 1980s, their personal partnership also became a professional one. Their duet “Love Can’t Ever Get Better Than This” became a major country success and earned them the CMA Award for Vocal Duo of the Year.
Naturally, fans assumed more duet projects would quickly follow.
But circumstances got in the way.
Ricky and Sharon were signed to different record companies, and contractual complications prevented them from immediately recording the full duet album they wanted to make. The idea remained in their hearts for decades.
Finally, in 2014, after more than three decades of marriage, they released Hearts Like Ours.
By then, the songs carried a different weight.
They were no longer simply two talented singers performing love songs. They were husband and wife singing after decades of raising children, facing challenges, growing older, strengthening their faith, and learning each other’s hearts.
Ricky said that after so many years together, he knew Sharon’s heart and she knew his.
Sharon expressed something similar. She realized that making the album later in life gave the songs far more meaning than they might have had decades earlier.
Their voices were carrying their history.
Perhaps that is why their story continues to resonate with country music fans.
The most memorable love stories are not always built around one breathtaking first meeting. Sometimes they are built slowly — through friendship, shared values, patience, music, faith, and countless ordinary days spent choosing the same person again.
For Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White, the young musicians who first crossed paths in 1971 could never have fully imagined what was ahead.
They would eventually share stages, songs, awards, a family, and more than four decades of marriage.
And through it all, the story kept returning to where it began:
Two people who loved music, became friends, and discovered that sometimes the greatest duet is not a song at all.
It is a life built together.
<h2>Video</h2>
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Ricky Skaggs &amp; Sharon White Skaggs talk about meeting for the first time" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r4vmA-1v3vs?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>