Just last week I said slán go fóill to the small cottage in rural Galway that has been our family home in Ireland for the last 24 years. John and I shared a love for the quiet camaraderie of life in that small village. He was anonymous and yet known to every person in the community! The impromptu pub sessions at Green’s are now something of legend.
At home now in Nashville, I am thinking of the summers John and I spent in Ireland with the boys, and then later, when just the two of us made time to fly over and wrap ourselves in the comfort of a modern but very simple 150-year-old home. On the brighter dry days, we would pack a picnic to go driving through the winding, seemingly endless roads of The Burren. John would pull the car over and we’d unpack lunch. Leaning on the vehicle, side by side, looking out on a breathtaking vista, that tea and those ham sandwiches never tasted so good. We were good. Sometimes we didn’t say many words; we were home together on the side of the road.
I cannot think of home, a home for me, with •
John + Fiona Prine — Country Music’s Greatest Love Stories
John Prine had been married twice before he found his wife Fiona. The pair met in 1988, in Dublin, Ireland -- far away from Nashville -- and their relationship was a bit of an uphill battle at first, Fiona Prine admits.
"There were a lot of things stacked against us,” she told Rolling Stone in 2017. “He was on the road and had been through two marriages."
"I was a high risk," John Prine admitted to Men's Journal in 2018. Nonetheless, for him, "it was love at first sight."
An Irish actress introduced the pair, at a concert after-party at the Blooms Hotel. "Fiona said, ‘I saw you play when I was 17. When will I hear you next?'" Prine recounted. "And I said, ‘Right now,’ and walked up onstage with her and just started playing."
At the time, Fiona was working in Dublin as a business manager for a recording studio, and despite those less-than-favorable odds, she and Prine kept in touch. Sh
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What we know for sure: We all have a story, and engaging with the arts helps all of us to tell our own stories on our own terms. We also know that there are ways to engage with the arts other than in formal cultural venues, and that sometimes it is more about the process of art making than it is about the end product. We also know that living an artful life, which is to say, living a life in which the arts and arts engagement are a priority means different things to different people based on their own interests, their communities, and many other factors, including equitable access. The Artful Life Questionnaire celebrates the diversity of ways we can make the arts a part of our lives, and, hopefully, inspires and encourages us to live our own unique versions of an artful life. In today’s edition of the questionnaire, we’re speaking with president of Oh Boy Records, founder and president of Hello in There Foundation, and National Council on the Arts member Fiona Whelan Prine.
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA): Please introduce yourself.