Dan + Shay, the award-winning duo made up of Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, recently celebrated ten years of friendship and music. The two singers met and immediately began collaborating, unaware that they were on the cusp of becoming one of country music’s most successful acts.

“My initial first impression was dead on,” Smyers tells Audacy’s Katie + Company. “I typed it in my phone; I recorded a voice memo when he started singing. This was at like 2:00 in the morning, after he had been quiet and chilling, just super shy all night. He was like, ‘Do you mind if I sing something?’ and borrowed my guitar and sang. Our jaws were on the floor, like, ‘This is the greatest singer of all time.’

“I put it in my phone as ‘Best Singer of All Time,’ and I still think that,” he continues. “He’s the best singer of all time. It was pretty spot on. And we wrote the next day, and here we are. The rest is history. It’s pretty crazy how it happened.”

Mooney also recalls that fateful night, and how much he knew his life and career were forever changing. Since then, Dan + Shay have sold millions of albums, filled massive arenas, celebrated multi-week, chart-topping singles and more. They’ve done it all with the ease of two people who have spent a lifetime together, not just a decade.

“We just met and we clicked,” Mooney shares. “It’s one of those things where we both did music for a long time, separately. We were chasing that dream, whatever that looked like. We just wrote, and that’s kind of how it began. It was very organic. We got along really well, and I think we complemented each other. We’re two very different people, but in a way that two puzzle pieces are obviously different. But it was perfect the way that we complemented each other and were able to bring in what the other didn’t have. He was very disciplined in his life, and I especially at that time, was very undisciplined.”

Since forming Dan + Shay, both of them have gone through personal changes as well, including Smyers marrying his wife, Abby, and Mooney marrying his wife, Hannah (who will soon give birth to their third child).  Both men find a lot of similarities between their work relationship and the one they have with their wives.

“Being in a duo is very much like a marriage,” Mooney reflects, “As we both are married now, we kind of know that’s what it is. It’s a relationship and it takes time, and it takes commitment, being able to compromise, and all of these things. It was never hard with Dan and I. It was very easy to just get along. It was never a struggle to sit down and write a song. It was all very easy from the very beginning.  can’t say I had any preconceived ideas. I knew he was a hard worker and that’s what I needed in my life, and the rest was kind of history.”

Dan + Shay currently have a Top 30 single with “You.” Find music and tour dates at DanandShay.com.