Joey+Rory

Joey + Rory first stepped into the national spotlight as a husband-and-wife country duo when they appeared on the 2008 season of CMT’s Can You Duet. Although Rory Lee Feek and Joey Martin Feek had each pursued solo paths for years, their joint performances earned them a third-place finish that quickly opened doors to a shared recording career. Kansas native Rory Feek arrived in Nashville in 1995 with the goal of selling his songs. An introduction to Harlan Howard secured him a publishing contract, and he remained the veteran writer’s sole staff writer until 2000, after which he joined Clint Black’s Blacktop Music roster. In 2004 he departed that arrangement to launch Giantslayer Publishing alongside collaborator Tim Johnson.

Indiana-born Joey Martin Feek made her earliest public performance at age six, delivering Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” during a first-grade talent show in Alexandria. She relocated to Nashville in 1998, secured a Sony Records contract in 2000, and cut a debut album under producers Paul Worley and Billy Crain; label restructuring ultimately kept the project on the shelf. She completed a second set, Strong Enough to Cry, in 2004, yet it received no official release, surfacing only as a digital download in 2007.

The pair returned to public attention in 2008 after a mutual acquaintance encouraged them to audition for Can You Duet. Once the series concluded they signed with Sugar Hill Records and issued their first joint project, The Life of a Song. Rory simultaneously offered a solo digital collection titled My Ol’ Man, but the duo’s album reached the country Top Ten and earned three Academy of Country Music Award nominations in 2010, one of which resulted in a win. Their follow-up, Album Number Two, appeared the same year and also entered the country Top Ten. A Farmhouse Christmas followed for the 2011 holiday season, while His and Hers surfaced in summer 2012 via Sugar Hill/Vanguard. Their debut gospel effort, Inspired: Songs of Faith & Family, arrived in 2013 and mixed original material with traditional hymns; later that year they released the country album Made to Last. A covers collection, Country Classics: A Tapestry of Our Musical Heritage, came out in 2014.

In 2015 Joey Feek disclosed that cervical cancer, previously treated, had returned and metastasized. That October the couple stated the diagnosis was terminal, and she entered hospice care the following month. Despite her health, the duo completed another gospel project, Hymns That Are Important to Us, issued in February 2016. Joey Feek passed away the next month at age 40.