Todd Tilghman and his wife, Brooke, have endured plenty of highs and lows throughout their 24-year marriage, including Tilghman pastoring a church in Mississippi, winning Season 18 of The Voice, and spending the last few years on the road performing his music. The Tilghmans, who are proud parents of eight children, have learned how to navigate the different twists and turns along the way, both the highs and the lows that come with so much change.
“In the years that we’ve been able to — it’s not been every year of our marriage — we’ve been just really deliberate about spending time with one another, and shutting pretty much everything else out,” Tilghman explains on the Team Us podcast. “Just shut it all out. I mean, don’t get me wrong; we’re in contact with our parents and the kids, wherever they are. But we just shut everything else out and it’s just she and I.”
The Tilghmans, by their own admission, almost divorced early in their marriage, a story they detail in their Every Little Win: How Celebrating Small Victories Can Lead to Big Joy., which was released in 2021. Through that trying season, they both learned how to navigate the hard times, emerging even stronger in their relationship with each other.
“I would say, 100 percent … my take on it is it is always, without fail, and without question, better on the other side,” the singer maintains. “If you will tough it out, your marriage, your relationship, everything is better on the other side of whatever that thing is that made you want to quit.”
“It does get better,” Brooke adds. “It ebbs and flows. There’s going to be seasons where you’re disconnected. There’s going to be seasons where you’re just not. Tough it out. Stay.”
With more than two decades of marriage already, Tilghman understands the trying seasons that are inevitable in any marriage. But now, after surviving what once seemd to be the end of their marriage, the 45-year-old also understands how hard it is to focus on the future in the middle of the struggle, but vows it is more than worth it to stick it out.
“Even with us, we’ve got this really remarkable story when you look back, but we didn’t realize at the time that we were putting together this tapestry,” Tilghman shares. “We were just doing life.”
Their marriage, now healthy and strong, once seemed almost beyond repair. The couple now has wise words they willingly share with others on the brink of divorce.
“It’s not gonna be better with someone else,” Tilghman insists. “It’s gonna be the same, possibly even worse, because now you have baggage that you didn’t have before, with the exes and everything.”
The Tilghmans bravely told their story in Every Little Win, each writing out their own truth about the different seasons in their marriage.
“That’s one way you can tell that we’re telling the truth in the book, because the stories that we tell in the book are basically, for the most part, our accounts of our lives from our own perspectives,” Tilghman told Everything Nash when the book was released. “Mainly the way that we wrote the book, because when I first even heard of it, I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ I’ll tell the truth: years and years ago, I thought I had some ideas of some things through ministry. I was like, ‘Maybe I can make a book out of this.’ So I started messing around, and I wrote for days and days. I printed it out, and I think it was like 15 pages.’ So, I told them straightaway, ‘I don’t know how to write a book.’”
Tilghman just released his latest single, “Dig My Grave.” He has performances over the next few months in Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas and more. All of Tilghman’s music and upcoming shows can be found at ToddTOfficial.com.