Partners both onstage and off, Joey and Rory Feek released seven albums as the country-bluegrass duo Joey + Rory. Always vocal about their Christian faith, the husband-and-wife team inspired audiences with songs like “When I’m Gone” and “This Song’s For You.” In 2014, Joey Feek received the tragic diagnosis of cervical cancer. She battled the disease off and on until her death on this day (March 4) in 2016.
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On the 10th anniversary of her passing, we honor the career and impact of Joey Feek, who was just 40 years old.
Born Sept. 9, 1975, in Alexandria, Indiana, Joey Marie Martin always dreamed of becoming a singer, performing publicly for the first time in a school play at age 5. In 1998, she moved to Nashville, taking an assistant job with an equestrian veterinarian.
How Rory and Joey Feek Met
About the time that Joey moved to Nashville, Rory was finding his footing as a songwriter. She first laid eyes on her future husband during a songwriter’s night at Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe, where he was playing. Almost by magnetism, she felt immediately drawn to him. However, she put any romantic intentions out of her mind when he introduced his two daughters to the crowd.
“Just sitting, watching him perform, I said to myself, ‘I don’t know who that man is, but I’m gonna marry him someday,” Joey Feek recalled in a later interview.
She did, in June 2002. At that point, Joey put her music career on the backburner to help raise Rory’s two daughters. Returning to the spotlight in 2008, Joey and Rory auditioned for the CMT show Can You Duet. After finishing in third place, the pair signed with Sugar Hill/Vanguard Records. That same year, they had their first chart entry with “Cheater, Cheater.”
“He Needs Me Singing up There”
In May 2014—just a few months after giving birth to the couple’s daughter, Indiana—doctors diagnosed Joey Feek with cervical cancer. Declared cancer free following surgery and treatment, the couple was devastated to learn in June 2015 that the disease had returned, metastasizing to her colon.
Joey candidly documented her fight against cancer, both on social media and the duo’s official website. Just three months before her death, the “When I’m Gone” singer opened up to The Tennessean about finding peace in her final days.
“I don’t fear anything because I’m so close to God and we’ve talked about it so many times,” she said, adding, ” God decided for me that my job of singing for people down here is my legacy, and he needs me singing up there. That’s how I look at it.”
Featured image by Jerod Harris/ACMA2012/Getty Images for ACM
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