To many on the outside, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban had the picture-perfect marriage.
The couple’s almost two-decade-long – and seemingly loving – marriage stood out as an anomaly among the Hollywood elite.
While the news has shocked fans around the world, the couple had issues just months into their marriage thanks to Keith’s arduous battle with drug and alcoholaddiction.
Four months after tying the knot in 2006, his addiction reared its head and the country music star went into rehab.
It’s a time in his life he has spoken very openly about, most recently while honouring his wife at her AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute back in June last year.
Inside Keith Urban’s shocking drug and alcohol addiction as details emerge about a ‘Cocaine Clause’ in his prenup with Nicole Kidman are revealed
Keith told Rolling Stone he started doing cocaine in the early 1990s
‘We got married in 2006, and barely four months into our marriage, the addictions that I had done really nothing about blew our marriage to smithereens,’ he told the crowd.
He also admitted to battling addiction at the time he met Nicole and, with her support, he eventually managed to pull through.
‘Four months into a marriage, and I’m in rehab for three months with no idea what was going to happen to us.
‘Nic pushed through every negative voice – I’m sure even some of her own – and she chose love.
‘And here we are tonight 18 years later. Her capacity to love is like no one I’ve ever met.’
Upon listening to her husband’s emotional speech, Nicole was visibly emotional in the audience, wiping away a tear as she listened to his heartfelt words.
Keith checked himself into the Betty Ford Centre at Rancho Mirage, California in October 2006, following a boozy bender while on tour.
The three-month stint was at the behest of Nicole, who staged an intervention to get her husband help.
Urban’s former songwriting partner, Vernon Rust, also wrote about the time in the late 1990s the former bandmates allegedly snorted $320,000 of the drug in an ‘epic binge’, in his book Fake News
The star checking in to the Cumberland Heights Treatment Centre in Nashville, back in 1998 for cocaine addiction
Keith recalled the moment his wife staged the intervention in the book Keith Urban by Jeff Apter.
He told Rolling Stone back in 2016 that he would have understood if Nicole chose to leave him after his 2006 rehab stint, given the couple had only married that year.
‘I was very, very blessed to have Nic call an intervention on me,’ Keith said, adding that his reckless behaviour ’caused the implosion of my fresh marriage’.
He also reflected on the intervention with Oprah Winfrey, admitting to the famed talk show host that he ‘went off the rails’ and ‘needed help and a new direction’ in his life.
Nicole, who was working in Rome at the time of his bender, flew back to the States and rounded up his friends to stage an intervention.
‘The love in that room in that moment was just right,’ Keith told Oprah. ‘To see love in action in that way… I’d never experienced anything like that before.’
While speaking of Nicole’s decision to stay with him during his third stint in rehab in eight years, Keith said that, at that point, ‘she really should’ve just walked.’
‘I’m just so glad she didn’t, and she made a decision to turn around and initiate ultimately this intervention,’ he said.
Keith, who left Australia for the US in 1992, has previously revealed that the move coupled with a painful breakup contributed to his addictions
At the time, he released a statement, which read: ‘I deeply regret the hurt this has caused Nicole and the ones who love and support me. One can never let one’s guard down on recovery, and I’m afraid that I have.’
It wasn’t the first time Keith had sought rehab, with the star checking in to the Cumberland Heights Treatment Centre in Nashville, back in 1998 for cocaine addiction.
Keith, who left Australia for the US in 1992, has previously revealed that the move overseas, coupled with a painful breakup, had contributed to his addictions.
He told Rolling Stone he started doing cocaine in the early 1990s.
Urban’s former songwriting partner, Vernon Rust, also wrote about the time in the late 1990s the former bandmates allegedly snorted $320,000 of the drug in an ‘epic binge’, in his book Fake News.
When the former friends performed as The Ranch in the late 1990s, Vernon claims Keith used ‘coke, crack, and weed’.
Vernon, who spent ’14 years homeless and addicted to crack’ after the group broke up, alleges they spent ‘over a quarter of a million dollars on cocaine’ recording the trio’s self-titled 1997 album.
Four months after tying the knot with Nicole in 2006, his addiction reared its head and the country music star entered rehab again
‘We lived in the studio. We did a lot of coke, and stayed up for days,’ he explains in the book.
‘Every track off that album was coke-fuelled.
‘Of the million [US] dollars spent on the recording of it… a fair guess would estimate at least 25 percent of that money went to Clinton’s “war on drugs” foot soldiers,’ he describes.
In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Keith reflected on the moment he was offered a ‘massive pipe’ by his roommate to try cocaine for the first time in Nashville.
‘I’d never had it, it looked good, so I took it. Things didn’t immediately go pear-shaped, but that was the beginning of it,’ he stated.
He revealed it was a break-up with a former girlfriend that sent him spiralling.
‘After that, s**t started to really go awry. I stepped up my drinking. I started doing more drugs. The whole back end of the Nineties were just awful,’ he explained.
Keith previously revealed that having grown up watching his father’s heavy drinking, it took him ‘a long time to get sober’ because he didn’t ‘recognise’ his own alcoholism.
It emerged this week that Keith may pocket more than $17million following his shock separation from Nicole – thanks to a prenuptial clause tied to his sobriety
He also admitted he ‘sucked at relationships’ prior to meeting Nicole, and that his song lyrics about love were far from his reality.
‘I would write these songs about love and relationships; I remember writing Somebody Like You and playing it for my girlfriend at the time and she just looked at me and said, “You’re a f**king hypocrite,” and I couldn’t argue that,’ he said.
Meanwhile, it emerged this week that Keith may pocket more than $17million following his separation from Nicole, thanks to a prenuptial clause tied to his sobriety.
The New Zealand-born singer reportedly signed an agreement with the actress before their 2006 wedding, which awards him $900,000 for every year of marriage, according to Radar Online.
However, the contract comes with a ‘Cocaine Clause’ which states Keith is only eligible for the money if he steered clear of drugs and alcohol across their marriage.
