Brandi Carlile and Her Wife Catherine Shepherd Have a Love for the Ages
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Get to know the woman who stole the singer's heart.
Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile may be best known for her critically acclaimed albums, her scores of awards, her all-female country supergroup The Highwomen, and perhaps most of all, for her electrifying performance of her signature track "The Joke" at the 2019 Grammys, which singlehandedly sent her star status into the stratosphere.
But beyond all of her fame and success, Carlile is perhaps most proud of the family she is building with her wife Catherine Shepherd, who she met backstage at a charity event in 2009—although at that point, they'd been communicating on the phone for more than a year. Carlile remembers being immediately drawn to her. “I think because of her wisdom and her demeanor,” she once recalled to PEOPLE.
Before that fateful encounter, Carlile had come out privately at age 15 and then publicly in 2002. She later reflected that the decision to do so “neither helped nor hindered” her success in the music industry, though she credits media representation for her self-realization. "If you take Elton John and the Indigo Girls and the Philadelphia soundtrack and Ellen DeGeneres out of my adolescence, where would I even be?" she told PEOPLE. "I came out of the closet before I'd ever even met a gay person in real life. I hadn't had anything close to a girlfriend, but I knew because I had representation in the larger culture."
Carlile and Shepherd tied the knot in 2012 and now live a somewhat private life, though they aren’t shy about posting about their love for one another on social media.
Read on to learn more about Brandi Carlile and wife Catherine Shepherd—including which movies you may have seen Shepherd in before!
Who is Brandi Carlile married to?
Catherine Shepherd is the daughter of prominent British actor Jack Shepherd, who's acted on the stage and screen since the early 1960s. (You may have seen him in 2007's The Golden Compass with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman.)
Initially inspired by her father to pursue acting, Shepherd ultimately transitioned to a career in philanthropy as a coordinator at Paul McCartney’s foundation; today, she helps run Carlile's Looking Out Foundation. She is also a musician, though she and her wife have not yet recorded anything together publicly. As Carlile once told Richmond Magazine, “[Shepherd] plays guitar and sings really well. We jam at home all the time but it doesn't really go any further than that."
Is Catherine Shepherd British?
Yes! Born in 1975, Shepherd raised in Hammersmith, London and attended the city's James Allen’s Girls’ School (where she also trained in ballet).
How old is Catherine Shepherd?
Shepherd was born on September 16, 1975. She is 47 years old.
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What does Catherine Shepherd do?
In the UK, Catherine Shepherd began acting as an on-set extra and went on to work in several movie and TV productions, including such British series as Servants, The IT Crowd, and Dog Face. Despite now working in philanthropy full-time, she still occasionally acts in projects like 2014's Paddington and 2017's Paddington 2. She's equally talented behind the camera, with writing credits on Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door and by writing-directing a 2011 short film called See Me that starred future Oscar winner Olivia Colman.
How did Brandi Carlile and Catherine Shepherd meet?
Shepherd was working as a coordinator for McCartney’s charitable work under the umbrella organization MPL Communications Ltd., when she and Carlile first met by phone. Carlile had contacted the Beatles frontman’s foundation to donate items for a Fight The Fear charity event she was throwing. “We communicated [over the phone] for about a year, and the entire time I thought I was talking to somebody who was 65. It was an interesting way to fall in love,” Carlile told PEOPLE. While their initial phone chats lit the first sparks of their relationship, it wasn’t until they met in person—after Shepherd flew to New York City for a charity event—that things really took off. Finding out that Shepherd was actually a young woman, instead of the 65-year-old Carlile had pictured, was “shocking to say the least,” the singer told PEOPLE.
When did Brandi Carlile get married?
The couple tied the knot in 2012 in Wareham, Massachusetts. Their celebration happened just three months after their engagement was announced and just before Referendum 74 (which legalizes same-sex marriage) was passed in Carlile’s home state of Washington. They also had a London ceremony at Chelsea Old Town Hall.
Their wedding day wasn’t without its own share of drama. In a Facebook post, Carlile recounted some of the ups and downs of the event. “I'm sure all weddings have an insane week preceding the event, but me and Catherine might have won that contest," she wrote. "Bailey (the dog) had to be rushed to the vet on our wedding day, and the day before the wedding, we had to put down one of our goats (RIP Tim). To top it all off, our priest didn't show up! Ha ha! (Not her fault but it'll be one of those funny stories we'll be telling for years.)... I got pretty teary during the ceremony but Catherine was graceful and composed in true British fashion!"
In September 2022, the couple marked 10 years of marriage.
Does Brandi Carlile have a child?
Actually, she has two! After marriage, Carlile and Shepherd knew they wanted to start a family immediately even if it was a little scary to venture out into unknown territory. "For my wife and me, every part of our emergence into the world of parenting was intentional and always felt a little like walking out onto thin ice, blindfolded,” Carlile said in 2020.
They have two children: daughters Evangeline (born 2014) and Elijah (born 2018). Carlile has reflected on the bittersweet feeling that she did not carry either child herself, acknowledging that the burden of her career would make it difficult to do so. In her book Broken Horses, the singer reflected that she was "feeling really confused about what my role even was" before she "made peace with not being pregnant,” understanding that their parenting was already “pioneering” since there wasn’t even a two-mother template for birth certificates yet.
These days, the family chooses to live a quiet life in rural Washington state in a compound near their families and Carlile’s bandmates—some of whom are married to Carlile and Shepherd’s siblings! Carlile’s bandmate, Phil Hanseroth, is married to Carlile’s sister Tiffany, while her cello player Josh Neumann is married to Shepherd’s sister, Sarah. The couples all raise their kids together and support one another unconditionally.
"Everybody teased, 'Brandi's forming a cult.' Next thing I knew, the people I work with were here. And we've married into each other's families,” Carlile once said in a Q&A in Parents Magazine. “It's a community-based effort.”
