Granger Smith Credits Wife Amber For Holding Their Marriage Together After Losing Son

Country singer Granger Smith and his wife, Amber Bartlett, still have a strong marriage after their 3-year-old died in a drowning accident, and he credits a decision by his wife for keeping them together. The couple spoke about losing their son River in 2019 in an interview with Today.

"I was the one with River. I was in the backyard with him when he went into the pool," Smith said. "She could have at any moment said: 'How dare you do this to our boy? How could you have turned your back on our baby?' Easily, in her deepest and darkest moments of anger or guilt or depression, she could have said: 'It was you in the backyard."

"That might have been the thing that split us up forever—she didn't do that."

Bartlett, for her part, said she avoided blaming her husband "by the grace of God."

"I just never felt that," Bartlett said. "This wasn't something that he did or something that I didn't do. We're a couple. How could I ever put blame on him?"

The couple told Today that they do their best to comfort other parents who have lost children and have found a community there. The grief of losing a child—unimaginable to most and devastating to those who experience it—can make it difficult for a marriage to endure, something which Smith said he was intensely aware of when they received the news at the hospital that their son wouldn't survive.

"We knew that couples don't make it," Smith said. "The odds are against us."

The couple sat together in a serenity garden at the hospital and "made an agreement, right then," Smith said. "It was like: 'OK, we're going to do this. The world is going to come at us; we're going to feel terrible; we have huge obstacles, but we are not going to split. We have to make this agreement for the other two kids."

The couple are parents to an older son and daughter, Lincoln and London. They had a fourth child, Maverick, three years after River's death.

Smith announced this spring that he would leave country music to devote his life to ministry. Smith is currently in seminary school and recently published a book about his experience, Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache. His final music tour, also called Like a River, wraps up in August.

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