It’s official! Scotty McCreery and longtime girlfriend Gabi Dugal are engaged! The country artist popped the question today in the mountains of North Carolina with a custom designed engagement ring.
“I’ve been planning this moment for so long that it feels surreal for it to have finally happened,” McCreery shared. “Gabi is the perfect girl and my true love, and I cannot wait to begin building our life together as husband and wife.”
The pair met back in kindergarten but didn’t start dating until the end of high school.
“When we first started dating, I was 17 years old — 18 years old, just kinda been thrust into the limelight…” McCreery told Entertainment Tonight at the ACM awards earlier this year. “We decided to keep it low-key, but we’ve been together four and a half years now, so I figure it’s time to talk a little bit more about her.”
Gabi graduated from the University of North Carolina in 2016 and is a nurse in the pediatric cardiology department at Duke University Hospital. The couple plans to get married in 2018.
You may remember Gabi from Scotty’s 2014 music video for his song “Feelin’ It”, which featured the beautiful Gabi along with some of Scotty’s real-life friends. She was also the flirtatious girl in his music video for the song “The Trouble With Girls”.
As for Scotty’s country music career, he released a brand new single titled “Five More Minutes” this past May as an independent artist before being signed with Triple Tigers. McCreery was surprisingly dropped by Mercury Records in 2016.
“Five More Minutes” made musical history as the first song independently released to make it on the Country Aircheck / Mediabase Top 50 charts. It sold more than 22,000 paid downloads and earned the No. 6 spot on the Billboard Country Digital Sales Chart.
This success paved the way for McCreery’s next record deal, which would be with the newly formed label Triple Tigers (formerly Triple 8 Management/ Thirty Tigers).
“I’m very excited to become part of the Triple Tigers/Sony Music Entertainment family,” said Scotty. “They believe in me and my music, they work hard, and for being a brand-new company, they are already succeeding. I am fired up to see what we can achieve together.”
Check out the now engaged Scotty McCreery and Gabi Dugal in the music video for “Feelin’ It” below!
