Emmy Russell is carving out her own legacy.
The former American Idol contestant and granddaughter of country music icon Loretta Lynn has had a big year — not only did she finish in the top five on the singing competition, but she also welcomed her first baby and (secretly) married the love of her life, Tyler Ward.
Now, as the couple is enjoying the first few days with their baby daughter, they’re releasing their first song together, “London Bridges,” which has a sweet meaning tied to their little one.
“My labor was long, but it was worth it,” Russell, 26, tells PEOPLE. “I remember looking at her and she immediately had…her eyes were wide open, they sat her on me, and she just looked at me, she knew I was her mom, and I just looked at her and like, ugh, it makes me cry still.”
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Russell had a particularly difficult labor. She labored for 36 hours and lost 1.6 liters of blood, which wasn’t caught by doctors until she was discharged. But despite the long road, the new mom says it’s all worth it to hold her daughter.
“I was really out of it because I was losing so much blood, and so I wasn’t really able to lift her my entire time at the hospital,” she shares. “But every time that I did get the chance to…that’s your child, it just melts your heart. I didn’t really know that kind of love existed.”
When it came time to decide their daughter’s name, Russell knew she wanted to honor her husband, Ward, whom she met through his company called Song House, a collective of songwriters based out of downtown Nashville. After coming off of Idol, Russell was at home when she says she felt like she heard someone telling her she was pregnant.
“I was sitting in my bed, as weird as this sounds, I literally heard, I felt like I heard God tell me, ‘Emmy, you’re pregnant, and your baby is Radiant.’ And I just heard the name Radiant. And so I was like, ‘Okay, well…’ And I felt the color pink,” she says.
Once she took a test, the musician discovered that she actually was pregnant — and she already had the name. “We said we had this name Radiant planned out, and it’s weird, but I just felt like that was the name,” Russell says. “And then I was thinking, ‘Well, Tyler’s middle name’s Ray.’ And then I told his mom and she was like, ‘Well, it’s a family name.'”
The two ultimately felt like they didn’t want to settle on a name until they met their daughter. But when she came out, they knew immediately.
“And the baby came out, and I was like…” Ward says, with Russell cutting in to say, “She looks like you.”
“Wait a second, is that me as a female?” Ward, a former YouTuber turned singer-songwriter, remembered asking. “And we talked about it a little bit, but Emmy was so down, and she was like, ‘Why don’t we just do it, ‘Taylor Ray Ward?’ And my name is Tyler Ray Ward.”
“So her name is Taylor Raydiant Ward, R-A-Y-D-I-A-N-T,” Ward, 40, clarifies. “We went with Taylor Ray for Tyler Ray, because she looks very similar and I’m freaking out. It’s amazing.”
While this is the first baby for the couple, they’ve also been raising Ward’s nephew Christian, who moved in with them when he was 7. They flew Christian out from Colorado to come live with them in Nashville on their farm, where he’s been staying ever since. “He was the start of the family,” Ward shares.
Their baby’s sweet name isn’t the only surprise — Ward and Russell also got married in the last year, choosing to have a small ceremony on the “down-low.”
“Emmy and I had been together for a while, and her heart was just like, ‘I want to be married.’ And then I’m like, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be married,’ ” Ward shares. “And then you think about losing someone that you become best friends with and tight with and you’re like, ‘Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s what marriage is. It’s just like, I don’t want this person out of my life.'”
The couple is not a fan of big weddings or prolonged processes, so instead of going through the typical wedding planning, they opted to have a last-minute ceremony in a living room.
“We told everybody so last minute because we wanted to make sure it was for us and not everybody else,” Ward explains, noting they bought a Kroger cake and got twinkle lights. “We wrote our own vows. And it was one of those things where you’re like, this to me is how it’s supposed to be, because it was between us.”
Now, Ward and Russell are channeling their love for their little one into a new song, which was written for them by a friend at Song House.
“We have a friend who was part of that writing crew, and when he found out that we were going to have a baby, he was one of the first people that we told,” Ward says. “And then a week later, we were at a writing camp, and the prompt was ‘how to make a grown man cry.'”
“And so they wrote this song, surprising me and Emmy, they came out like, ‘Hey, we think you’ll like this.’ And they played it, and I couldn’t get enough,” he continues. “I teared up so much, to where it felt like our song.”
As they were at the hospital gazing down at their baby daughter, they realized they had to record the song that their friend had played for them. Once they got permission from the songwriters, it was only 48 hours later that they started recording.
“There was just such magic that it was like, ‘Let’s put it out, and maybe we’ll have a duet and maybe we’ll be a band. And we have all these other songs, maybe we’ll start releasing music as a duet,” Ward says. “And the whole flood gates opened of ideas.”
“And it’s called ‘London Bridges,’ and so it’s like the nursery song, London Bridges, like ‘London Bridge is falling down,’ ” Russell explains. “So it’s like that, ‘When your London Bridges are falling down, I’ll be right there with you. So we’re right there for you.'”
Recording the music video was emotional for both Ward and Russell, who admits she “cried probably the second, third take.” Ward, in turn, says he was “crying the entire time.”
“It’s beyond what I know at the moment; it feels like a brand new adventure we’re on, and I feel like everybody’s been here before, but it feels so new to us,” Ward says of the experience.
“And so being able to write the song or just record the song and perform the song, for the week old darling Taylor Ray, I just think that that is the stamped moment you just…it’s a scrapbook moment you always go to. It’s one of those significant moments that just shape you.”
“London Bridges” is streaming now on all platforms.
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