The 37-year-old, who stepped away from her post as midday talent on SiriusXM’s contemporary country channel The Highway in April, didn’t comment publicly on her husband’s death for months, having ever-so-many memories to revisit in the meantime.
“One of the most beautiful lessons my husband taught me was in a moment of a crisis, if you don’t know what to do, ‘do nothing, just be still,'” Pickler told People in an interview published Aug. 17. “I have chosen to heed his advice.”
All the support she’s received “has truly touched my soul,” she continued, “and it’s helping me get through the darkest time in my life. As many of you have told me, you are all in my prayers.”
The “Best Days of Your Life” singer, who rose to fame when she finished sixth on American Idol in 2006 and solidly ranks among the long-running show’s more enduring success stories, met Jacobs in 2008 when she literally spotted him across a crowded room at a Nashville bar.
“I didn’t know who he was or what he did,” Pickler recalled on The Real in 2015. “We just locked eyes and I went, ‘I gotta know everything about this person.'”
They closed the place down, too busy talking to realize all their friends had left them to it.