Carrie Underwood is heading back to the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night, and this time it’s for a good cause.
The Opry is putting on two special shows on Friday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Central, to mark National Adoption Month. Carrie, one of the biggest voices in country music, is on the bill. The shows benefit Show Hope, an adoption charity in Franklin, Tennessee, started in 2003 by Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth. Since Oct. 28, $5 from every ticket has gone to the charity.
It’s a good excuse to look back on a very funny family moment from that same stage.
It happened in June 2022. Carrie played the Opry twice on Tuesday, June 7, and one of those was her annual fan club party show. Her husband, retired NHL hockey player Mike Fisher, was there with their two boys. Mike played for the Ottawa Senators and the Nashville Predators, and he and Carrie have been married since July 2010.
Their sons were little then. Isaiah was 7, and his brother Jacob, who goes by Jake, was 3.
Carrie was out front singing a slow ballad, “I Told You So.” Meanwhile, at the side of the stage, things were not slow at all.
The boys were dancing like crazy.
They had no idea anyone was watching. Carrie later explained why the side of the Opry stage fools you: “so, I’m singing a ballad up there and you also have this like, false sense of security at the Opry.” She added that “when you’re back there, you’re kind of back there in the dark, and you feel like nobody can see you.”
But someone could. Carrie had asked a friend backstage to take pictures, and her friend ended up filming the boys too. Clips of them soon made the rounds online.
Carrie could tell from the footage that Mike was trying his best to calm things down. In her telling, he was whispering “Stop it! Stop it!” As for her oldest? “Isaiah is like, ‘What? What?'” she said.
So why couldn’t the boys stand still during Mom’s love song?
Carrie had the answer, and it’s one every parent of a toddler will understand. “That was called, it’s way past my bedtime,” she told Entertainment Tonight.
Little Jake had a plan. “The little one, Jake, he was just trying to not stop moving, because if he did, he was going to fall asleep,” Carrie explained.
Her final verdict was short. “Yep, crazy boys.”
In this interview Carrie talks about that night at the Opry with her boys, so you can hear the bedtime excuse straight from Mom.
Carrie on what her boys were up to at the side of the stage
Isaiah is 11 now, and Jake is 7. When Carrie was asked whether her boys might take after her one day, she answered, “I think so, I think so.” Then she added, “They’re not shy, that’s for sure.”
Tomorrow night she’ll be back at the Opry for Show Hope. Her boys are a lot bigger now, and hiding in the shadows by the stage probably isn’t as easy as it used to be.