Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Amy Earnhardt may joke about the ups and downs of parenting, one moment melting over their daughters, the next losing patience, but through every chaotic phase, they’ve remained rock solid together. Their love story stretches back to 2009, culminating in a New Year’s Eve wedding in 2016 that reflected both simplicity and sincerity.
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There were no glittering metal rings, owing to Junior’s fear of jewelry (kosmemophobia), but silicone bands that suited their unpretentious bond. Yet it was the proposal that caught the uniqueness of their relationship.
On June 17, 2015, while tracing his lineage through Germany, Dale Jr. dropped to one knee inside a thousand-year-old church in Speyer, the very place where his 10th great-grandfather had been baptized and married. The driver who had faced countless split-second decisions at 200 mph described this one as instinctive, born of emotion and history. With his sister Kelley present to witness it, Junior seized a rare quiet moment in their ancestry tour to turn it into a defining one.
Amy later recounted the scene with disbelief and joy. In a video shared by Racing America, she said she had been wandering through the church when she turned toward the altar and saw him kneeling.
“I literally just look at him like ‘What, are you sure? He starts, he goes through his whole spill, Kelly’s crying already, and then he gives me a ring, and then we have a few moments afterwards, and Kelly, LW, and Martin walk out. And I’m like ‘Are you sure sure?’ “
“Because I mean… until that moment, like we had had so many conversations about not getting married, that I never thought it would happen. And so I was okay with that, and I was just there for the ancestry to begin with, so it totally blew me away, but he really knocked it out of the park,” she continued.
The Earnhardts’ wedding the following year was intimate, and since then, life has grown busier but richer. Now parents to daughters Isla and Nicole, they share snippets of family life through their Bless Your Hardt’ podcast, where their candid tales of parenting misfires and tender moments alike have earned them a loyal following.
