2010-2022Tyler Hubbard
Brian Kelley
Florida Georgia Line is a duo comprising Tyler Hubbard (Hometown: Monroe, Georgia) and Brian Kelley (Hometown: Ormond Beach, Florida) - hence the name. Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard came up with their moniker at, "probably 2:30 or 3 in the morning." Kelley revealed to Parade: "We had to stop showing up as Brian and Tyler, so we put our heads together and said, 'I want to represent where I'm from, and you want to represent where you're from.' Two states got thrown out, and then the 'Line,' and it kind of stuck, it never felt like we should change it."
Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley met while they were both students at Belmont University in Nashville. "I had a third year writing class with one of Tyler's roommates," Kelley recalled to Keepin' It Country. "And he introduced us saying that we'd hit it off musically. We became good friends, and when we graduated we moved in together and started writing songs."
Florida Georgia Line's first EP,
Anything Like Me, was released December 14, 2010. It included the song "
Black Tears," which was discovered by Jason Aldean online and recorded by the country star for his 2012
Night Train album. Hubbard told us at the 2013 ACM Awards: "It worked out nicely for us. That's been a song that we loved for a log time, and it's really cool that Aldean cut it and it did well for him so it's an honor, man."
The duo's second EP,
It'z Just What We Do, features the summer song "
Cruise," which began climbing the country and radio charts. The single was certified gold by the end of 2012. The track's success had been predicted by Brian Kelley as soon as the pair started laying it down. "I remember first day in the studio when we were recording 'Cruise' and it was starting to come to life," said Tyler. "BK looked at me and he said, 'Dude, we're gonna sell a million copies of this song.' And I'm like, 'Dude, there's no way. It's not even possible.'"
"Cruise" spent 24 weeks at #1 on Hot Country Songs (over three different runs), the longest in the chart's history. The previous record was 21 weeks held jointly by three songs.
In "Cruise," the pair mention "a brand new Chevy." Both Hubbard and Kelley received brand new Chevy Silverados from a Georgia car dealership in appreciation.
"Cruise" overtook Lady Antebellum's "
Need You Now" in January 2014 to become the #1 best-selling digital Country single of all time.
Brian Kelley married his girlfriend of seven months, Brittney Cole, in an intimate outdoor sunset ceremony at the singer's Nashville home on December 16, 2013. There were 40 guests including Tyler Hubbard and the couple exchanged gold bands passed on to them by Kelley's parents. "Non-traditional" is how Kelley described their nuptials to People magazine. "If you know us, you know that we really just dance to our own beat. We thought, 'Let's do it our way.'"
Brittney played a school kid in the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite along with her sister Tiffany.
Kelley was a baseball star in high school, a left-handed pitcher with a 7-1 record in his senior year. That earned him a scholarship to Florida State University where his teammates included future San Francisco Giants all-star Buster Posey. However Kelley had less playing time than expected, so he decided to switch to Belmont University and pursue his passion for music.
Tyler Hubbard married his longtime girlfriend, fashion blogger Hayley Strommel, on July 1, 2015 at Trail Creed Cabin in Sun Valley, Idaho. The couple tied the knot on the two-year anniversary of their first kiss. Brian Kelley was Hubbard's best man on their special day.
Hubbard and Kelley started off as joint worship leaders while attending college. "That's basically how we learned how to play guitar and connect with a crowd, at church," Hubbard explained to The Boot. "We used to lead worship for a little youth group outside of Nashville. It was great. It was a little side money at the time, which we really needed, but it was also time for us to get away from the house for a little bit and lead worship. It was something for us that was very rewarding on a lot of different levels."
Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard almost named themselves Orange Peach. "We lived together for two years in Nashville and were hanging out in the hall and decided to take this music thing seriously and wanted to represent where we came from," Kelley recalled to
Taste of Country. "Orange Peach was an early suggestion, then it got moved to Florida Georgia Line."
During the run of "
Meant to Be" at the summit of the Country chart in 2018, Florida Georgia Line earned their 90th week overall at the top of the listing. In doing so the duo edged out George Strait as the act with the highest total number of weeks at #1 since the tally launched in 1958.
Florida Georgia Line played their final show on August 31, 2022, before an indefinite hiatus from recording music together and touring. They ended the performance at the Minnesota State Fair with a singalong of "
H.O.L.Y." before closing with their breakthrough hit "
Cruise."
Their political differences - Hubbard is blue and Kelley is red - boiled over around the time of the 2020 presidential election when Hubbard unfollowed Kelley on social media. A few months after releasing their album Life Rolls On in 2021, Kelley released his first solo album, Sunshine State Of Mind. Hubbard issued his first (self-titled) solo album in 2023.
