Whenever a woman brings her boyfriend home to meet her family, there’s almost always a bit of anticipation before the happy couple walks through that door together. But when the boyfriend is the biggest star in NASCAR at the time, namely Dale Earnhardt Jr., that anticipation ratchets up into pressure.
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Dale Jr. joined wife Amy on this week’s edition of her podcast, “Ask Amy.” An audience member posed the question as to what it was like when Junior met Amy’s parents for the first time.
Although he professes to be shy, Junior beat his wife to the punch in answering that question first. “They were like damn, where’d you meet him, he’s awesome. They were like, Amy, don’t screw this one up,” Junior said with a chuckle.
But his wife was more the voice of reason, clarifying what really happened. She said, “No, that’s not how that happened. My dad says, ‘Does he know what he has?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Dad, we’ll see.’
“They were excited to meet him. They had never been around a celebrity before and honestly, they perceived him just like I did. I don’t find the celebrity thing to be a thing that intimidates to me, and I think Dale can attest to that.
“Unless it’s Dolly Parton, I’m probably just going to walk up and treat you like a normal person. They treated him like a new member of the family. They loved him. It wasn’t very awkward. I was probably more nervous than I probably should have been, but it was fine.”
Junior was concerned that Amy’s parents may be intimidated by his celebrity status, but he wound up having nothing to worry about. Rather than meet at a fancy restaurant, Amy’s parents invited Junior to their family farm, where they met the man who would become their future son-in-law at a bonfire.
“I just tried to show them I wasn’t afraid to grab some firewood off the pile, or help stoke the fire and keep it going, or fill the cooler,” Junior quipped. “I thought they would probably assume I was somebody who was used to having everybody do everything for me.
“So I made it a real point to show them I could do things to make this night happen and help things happen and go, ‘Hey, anybody need a beer or you want a beer?’ I tried really hard to be normal and leave a good impression.” Obviously, he did.
“He just tried to be a normal person,” Amy Earnhardt said of her husband. She added that while her parents were excited to meet Junior, they weren’t worried or “standoffish” at all.
Meanwhile, Junior was just thrilled to meet folks that drank beer just like him. And standing around a fire and playing music is what he would have done anyways, as he honestly remarked. So, it wasn’t much of an ask to fit in with his would-be in-laws at that time.
