Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman have been married for almost a decade, after meeting in 2005, 15 or so years after Urban first moved to the United States from Australia. The country star isn't shy about his past struggles with addiction -- nor is he shy about admitting that it's his now-wife who helped him clean up his act for good.

Urban's career struggled for a bit after his move to Nashville. The singer told The Boot and other reporters at a reception for his Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit, Keith Urban So Far, that going back to his home country "never entered my mind."

"I just thought about keeping going, because it must just be around the corner, and they kept moving the corner," Urban says. "But I just kept going and kept going, and believing and believing."

Aware that he was battling some strong addiction issues, in 1998, the singer-songwriter entered a treatment center to help him learn to cope with his struggles. After he completed the program, "[w]ork was good, until 2003, when I hadn’t taken care of myself, and off I go to my second treatment center," Urban recalls, "and that didn’t take either."

Ultimately, it was Kidman, whom Urban met at G’Day L.A., a Hollywood event honoring Australians, who "saved" the country artist.

"[She's] the one I’ve been looking for and the one I’ve been preparing for, or life has been preparing me for, anyway," Urban gushes. "We got married, and I hadn’t taken care of my problems, and so my demons just came and kicked my a-- and her a-- and blew our world up. But this woman rallied the troops ..." and helped get her husband into rehab, just a few months after their wedding.

"In so many ways, it was the most powerful act of love in reaching into the fire and pulling me out," Urban explains, "because she believed in me, and she saw something in me in such a way that she risked everything, everything, to trust me and pull me out of the fire and let me then do the right thing and move into the light.

"I’m blessed that my mom and dad stayed together their whole life ... I’ve seen that you can stay together and find your great love," he continues. "I didn’t know s--t about it until I met my wife. I didn’t know anything about love. I didn’t know anything about marriage. I didn’t know anything about self-sacrifice. I didn’t know anything about taking care of a woman. Nothing ... I didn’t have relationships; I took hostages."

The happy couple have two children together, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, and Urban acknowledges that his life would be entirely different without Kidman's love and support.

"There’s a great Hemingway quote that says, ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, some are strong at the broken place,’ and I feel that that is what my wife brought to me," he says. "I’m strong in the broken places because she saw something in me, and I love you for that."

Keith Urban So Far is scheduled to be on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame until May.

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