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Keith Urban's life has unfolded as many great country songs do: with joy and despair, triumph and regret. After leaving Australia at age 25 for the honky-tonks of Nashville, Urban, 40, struggled for five years before his singular combination of Aussie swagger, soulfulness, sex appeal and raw musical talent finally clicked. Since his first CD, 1991's Keith Urban, he's won a Grammy, the entertainer of the year trophy at the Country Music Association Awards in 2005 and sold more than 10 million records. Then he just so happened to fall in love with the world's most famous Australian woman. On June 25, 2006, in Sydney, Urban walked down the aisle with his flame-haired bride in an exquisite wedding that captured the imagination of their homeland. But four months later, just as he was about to promote his new album, Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing, Urban shocked everyone by entering the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs on Oct. 19 for treatment for his recurring battle with alcohol abuse. No stranger to the pain of addiction‹in 1998 he checked into Nashville's Cumberland Heights treatment center with a cocaine problem–Urban says this second time round came because he saw the writing on the wall: "Life's about crossroads," he says. "You can choose life or you can go the other way. . . . It's not a matter of all the intricate stuff in between. It's just life or no life." Kidman, although blindsided by the news, stood squarely at her husband's side. "Listening to her heart," Urban says, she immediately hopped a flight from Rome, where she had been promoting a film, to support him. Urban went on to spend several red-letter days–his 39th birthday, six-month wedding anniversary and album release–inside the stark confines of Betty Ford. "It was very, very hard to have to have her go through that," says Urban, who checked out in January after 90 days. "I've learned an enormous amount having a relationship with someone who is in recovery," Kidman recently told Vanity Fair. "I'm more than willing to walk it with him."
Now in recovery, Urban is back on the road and walking the line between his two great passions: his music (a greatest hits album, 18 Kids, comes out Nov. 20) and his wife (between tour dates, he's been jetting Down Under, where Kidman has been shooting the epic Australia). Eager not to betray his private world with Nicole, Urban is vague about the days leading up to his return to rehab, but open about his wife's support during the ordeal. In a conversation with PEOPLE's West Coast editor Elizabeth Leonard, he also reveals the reasons he's battled addiction, the joys and challenges of life on the road and his new dreams of a life and family with his famous spouse.
