Cole Swindell at the 2023 ACM Awards

Cole Swindell started off ACM Award week already a winner as he became an engaged man. Happy as can be, Swindell caught up with Audacy’s Katie Neal ahead of the 58th Annual ACM Awards to fill us in on everything surrounding the big proposal. From the special place he asked, to fighting Taylor Swift traffic to pick up the bling -- he filled us in on all the memorable behind-the-scenes moments. “I did it Sunday, on the way out here [to the ACM Awards]”, Cole said. “We have both of our families coming out to the awards — we’ve never done that before — she’s never had family come out to the awards so figured it would be a cool place [to celebrate].” He continued to share he popped the question on a special “detour” the couple took on their way to the Awards in a special spot in rural Tennessee where they had their first date. “It just dawned on me that our first date was a video shoot for my song, ‘Some Habits,’ so that location is right outside of Nashville about 45 minutes, so we took a little detour on our way to Frisco and I took her back to the video shoot location and that’s where I proposed,” he said. “She never saw that coming — we had talked about the engagement — but she didn’t know when. She thought it was going to be out here [in Texas].” The 39-year-old said he got right down to business after picking up the ring only 7 hours before he popped the big question. A little tighter of a time frame than he hoped for, and that’s all thanks to Taylor Swift concert traffic. “I only had it for about seven hours. The day we were leaving, the people in Charlotte that did it flew it to Nashville and little did I remember that Taylor Swift was in town,” he explained. “I was like, ‘It’s 10:30 in the morning, I’ll be good, Imma go ahead and get [picking it up] out of the way — not good. It looked like she [Swift] was playing a pop-up acoustic show in every restaurant in the Gulch [in Nashville]. People everywhere! I didn’t miss any of the craziness of T. Swift, but got the ring and had it about 7 hours before I got it off of me and on her hand and that’s where it’ll be.” The engagement was the perfect start to a big week for Swindell who has a whopping 5 nominations at tonight’s awards and will also be performing his mega-hot, “She Had Me At Heads Carolina” alongside ‘90s artist, Jo Dee Messina. Catch all the action at tonight’s 58th Annual ACM Awards taking place live from Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, TX. The show can be streamed via Amazon’s Prime video beginning at 7PM EDT / 6PM CDT / 4PM PDT. Words by Monica Rivera Interview by Katie Neal