The superstar judges on season 23 of “American Idol” are used to being fawned over by fans. But when Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie, and Carrie Underwood appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show” on March 7, 2025, they all revealed they’ve done their own fawning over other celebrities.
After Underwood, 41, confirmed that she was a member of the Jonathan Taylor Thomas fan club in seventh grade, the trio talked with Barrymore, 50, about their own past crushes on stars — before they each found their own true loves.
Luke Bryan Says He Thought Supermodel Elle Macpherson Was ‘Perfect’
Carrie Underwood with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Lionel Richie with Halle Berry, and Luke Bryan with Elle Macpherson
During a segment on Barrymore’s talk show, an audience member who proclaimed herself a “super, super, duper fan” of Underwood’s correctly guessed the fan club she was in as a kid. The country superstar confirmed her crush on Thomas at the height of his “Home Improvement” fame.
“Oh, I had so many — like, I had hundreds of posters on my wall,” Underwood gushed.
Barrymore admitted her first crush was on the male cast of the 1983 movie “The Outsiders,” which included 80s hunks Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell.
When she asked Richie, 75, and Bryan, 48, to confess their teenage crushes, Richie racked his brain for an answer until Bryan quipped, “Lionel’s so sweet he can’t even admit a crush!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Richie interjected. “Let me be honest with you. There’s a moment in my life, and I’m gonna say this. Truthfully, it was not even a teenage crush. The day I met Halle Berry was the day everything — she was my next, next, next door neighbor when I first moved to L.A. and it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ You know, (her) personality was just wonderful. That was the crush of the crush.”
When it was Bryan’s turn to share, he blushed, “Oh goodness. There were a few, a few crushes. I think it’s probably Elle Macpherson.”
“Not in a creepy, ‘Sports Illustrated way,’” he said of the supermodel, but Richie exclaimed, “Yes it was!”
Laughing, Bryan nodded, “Yeah. But you know, I remember being a kid, I remember just going, ‘Gosh, that’s, like, the prettiest human being I’ve ever seen. And I just thought she was just perfect.”
Who Are Carrie Underwood, Lionel Richie & Luke Bryan’s True Loves?
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Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher, Lionel Richie and Lisa Parigi, Caroline and Luke Bryan
Though Underwood, Richie and Bryan admitted to prior celebrity crushes, they each have been with their true loves for many years.
Underwood met former NHL player Mike Fisher in 2008 and they married two years later, per People. They share two sons — Isaiah, 10, and Jacob, 6.
Richie has been married twice, but has been with Swiss entrepreneur Lisa Parigi for more than a decade, according to People. He was married to Brenda Harvey from 1975 to 1993, per Us Weekly, and they adopted their daughter Nicole together. In 1995, Richie married Diane Alexander and the couple had two kids — son Miles and daughter Sofia before divorcing in 2004.
Bryan, meanwhile, dated his wife Caroline on and off during college in the late 90s, per People, and they married in 2006. They have two sons, 16-year-old Thomas “Bo” Boyer and 14-year-old Tatum “Tate” Christopher Bryan. The couple also helped raise Bryan’s nieces and nephew after the deaths of his sister and brother-in-law.
While appearing on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” he admitted to Barrymore that he got his wife’s initials tattooed on his rear end several years after she did the same for him.
“So, my wife started this,” Bryan explained. “She started the tattoo thing. She did an ‘LB’ on her booty cheek. She just was sure that I would never reciprocate. And one day out on the road, I said, ‘Let’s find a parlor, and went and pulled the ol’ ham out, and got her initials on my booty cheek.
