Rory Feek Is ‘Just As In Love’ With Joey Two Years After Her Passing

Rory Feek of Joey+Rory is still as in love with his wife Joey as he was before her untimely death more than two years ago.

Written by Lauren Laffer
Rory Feek Is ‘Just As In Love’ With Joey Two Years After Her Passing
Joey+Rory; Photo via Rory Feek/ThisLifeILive.com

More than two years ago, music fans around the world sat riveted as they watched the final months of Joey Feek’s life. The event was devastating to the world as the talented and Godly woman stood in the face of cancer and fought until the bitter end. Battling with grace, Joey gracefully left the world after a long battle with stage IV cervical cancer and bid farewell to her loving husband and duo partner, Rory, and their young daughter, Indiana.

As time moves forward, Rory is still finding his feet and deciding on his next move in life, publishing two books and touring the nation since his beloved wife’s passing. Though she may not be with him physically, her spirit and love still surrounds him every single day.

“I feel just as married and just as in love,” he said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning. “I feel like she’s just as much a part of our life as she was.”

During his interview with the morning broadcast, he also recognized that his return to the stage was “surreal and strange, a little wrong in some ways. But on the other side of it, it felt strangely familiar.”

Adjusting to life after Joey’s passing has been an uphill venture for the widower, but one that he hasn’t faced alone. Along with the couple’s daughter, Indiana, and his own from a previous relationship, Hopie and Faith, Rory is finding his own way.

During his interview with CBS, he revealed that his faith had been tested once more as his daughter Hopie revealed to him that she was gay, something he didn’t know quite how to react to at first.

“I said, ‘Just tell me, Hopie,’” Feek recalled of when his daughter revealed her secret. “And she went on to tell me that her friend Wendy was more than her friend, that Wendy and [she] had been dating for almost a year. And that she was in love.”

The couple will wed this fall on the farm where Joey was laid to rest, but the road to that moment wasn’t an easy one for the father and daughter.

“Am I supposed to shun my child now and say, ‘No, you can’t be in my life until you come around to thinking like I’m thinking?’ ” he revealed of his internal struggle. “The only thing I try to keep in mind is it’s her life, it’s her choice, it’s her faith. And my job is to love her even when it’s hard.”

Rory’s new book, Once Upon a Farm: Lessons in Growing Love, Life and Hope on a New Frontier, is available now.