New Country Music Hall of Fame Exhibit Traces Lainey Wilson’s Dream Come True: ‘Always Had Stars in My Eyes’ (Exclusive)

When Lainey Wilson learned last year that she’d been selected to be the subject of a major exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, she confesses that she was seized by a rare moment of self-doubt.

“Even though I have been working my entire life for this, I still feel like I somehow got started yesterday,” the 33-year-old artist tells PEOPLE. “So for me, I was a little bit like … An exhibit? Oh, shoot. Like, is there enough story to tell?”

Rest assured, there is — though it’s no wonder Wilson’s sense of time is off-kilter. In the scant four years since she first topped the charts with “Things a Man Oughta Know,” her climb has been so steep and fast that she’s often described her life as a whirlwind — so much so that that’s what she chose to name her latest album.

But on Thursday night, the winds calmed as Wilson took her time, slowly and meticulously absorbing the expansive exhibit that told her life story. She declared the experience “humbling.”

The opening at the Nashville museum, she says, has come in the midst of a moment when she’s been intentionally trying to moderate her velocity.

“I’ve been able to spend a little bit more time at home this year,” she reveals, “and so I really feel centered and grounded and able to come here during that season of my life and really get to soak this in and see where it started. Coming here today and getting to see it from start to finish, it puts a lot of things in perspective for me.”

Her biggest takeaway?

“That I am hardheaded!” she says with a laugh.

Her snap assessment surely matches the exhibit’s title, “Lainey Wilson: Tough as Nails,” which takes viewers through every formative phase of the artist’s life: Her classic-country upbringing in speck-on-a-map Baskin, Louisiana. Her dream — a life onstage — that first took hold when she was just 5 years old. The fateful family vacation that cemented Nashville as her ultimate destination. A decade of seemingly endless dues-paying in a city more prone to killing dreams than making them come true. And then the “overnight” success that has turned Wilson into one of country music’s brightest superstars.

Her fans know the story well because Wilson has told it many times in interviews over the years. But what struck the curators who assembled the exhibit was how deftly the artifacts they found illustrated Wilson’s narrative.

“We did a lot of digging,” says museum writer-editor Angela Stefano Zimmer, “and we got to see all the little pieces fall into place.”

Their work required no small thanks to Wilson’s mother, Michelle, who has held onto a mountain of mementos generated by both Lainey and her older sister, Janna.

“I have never been more proud of the fact that my momma was a hoarder until now,” the artist said during her remarks at the museum’s reception Thursday night. Her mom and dad, Brian, seated a few feet away, laughed along with her. “She kept it all. She told me to tell y’all, too, that she kept it all because she believed that I could.”

Among the treasures that Zimmer and co-curator Jon Freeman found in the Wilson household trove is documentation of where it all began: a snapshot of the artist’s first stage appearance, in 1998, when she sang “Butterfly Kisses” at her kindergarten graduation. It’s paired with a wrinkled program that reveals Wilson was the only kindergartner that day who stepped up to sing a solo — a detail that Wilson doesn’t even remember.

What she does clearly recall was that “I was ready. I’ll tell you what, I felt alive at 5 years old. I knew it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me at 5 years old.”

Viewers will get to linger over several artifacts that show Wilson had an active and bucolic childhood: a ruffled gingham outfit, a Brownie vest, a cheerleading uniform, a pair of little red Bronco boots, a pint-sized tooled saddle.

Wilson is especially pleased the saddle made it into the exhibit.

“I learned a lot in that saddle,” she says, recalling the endless hours she spent on a small white horse named Scooter. “He is the one that taught me how to ride, so just seeing that little saddle, I still feel like I’ve got that cowgirl in me.”

But also pervading the exhibit are two constants: Wilson’s love of music and her relentless pursuit to make a life in it.

“I have always had stars in my eyes,” says Wilson. “I see it in the pictures of me as a little girl. I feel like I’ve tried my best to hold on to that inner child, and I’m proud of her. I think she’s got grit.”

Among the badges on that Brownie uniform is one for music. The exhibit also features her first guitar, a Fender acoustic that her father gave her. And on prominent display are the Grand Ole Opry tickets from July 27, 2002 (section 9, row U, seats 2-5) that her parents purchased after Wilson talked them into a Nashville detour following their Dollywood vacation. It was on this visit that Wilson became convinced she was destined for Music City.

That same year she penned “Lucky Me,” her first stab at songwriting, and those lyrics are in the exhibit, as well: “Lucky me / I am free / And I can’t deny that he loves me.” In another document, handwritten at age 14, Wilson describes her first recording session, during a summer visit to Nashville, in the studio of the late producer Jerry Cupit, a family friend who eventually became her beloved mentor.

“It was so much fun & I had a wonderful experience,” she wrote. “I never realized how much hard work country music stars have to go through to make thier [sic] song sound absolutely perfect.”

Two years later, she wrote in the daily journal she kept: “My dream is to become a country singer/songwriter. I know I can do it. I just have to have faith.”

Also in the exhibit is a sequined top and wig that Wilson wore during her teenage years when she earned money performing at birthday parties and other events as Miley Cyrus’ TV character, Hannah Montana. “It was an opportunity to get me to where I wanted to be,” Wilson says in a quote on an exhibit placard.

The hard years after Wilson moved to Nashville in 2011 are well documented, as is her meteoric rise. Among the highlights is her vast (and presumably growing) collection of awards, including her covey of CMA and ACM trophies and her 2024 Grammy for Best Country Album, and an array of stage wear that’s a fashionista’s feast.

The display also features the preludes to Wilson’s now trend-setting style: her original homemade bell-bottom pants and her first flat-brimmed hat with a feathered band. The latter was a gift handmade by a British drummer who became a friend and gave it to Wilson while she was still relatively unknown.

The first time she put on the hat, she recalls, “I remember feeling like it was a part of the costume — like the superhero feeling of just, now I can get up there [onstage] and take care of business.”

Standout outfits include a bedazzled Wrangler vest, necktie, and jeans that she wore at her ultimate full-circle moment, a 2024 performance of the Hannah Montana theme song at a Disney Legends tribute to Cyrus, as well as the dramatic black jumpsuit with ruffled bell-bottoms that she wore to receive her 2023 CMA Entertainer of the Year award.

That was the night she memorably declared, “It finally feels like country music is starting to love me back.”

Standing before her exhibit on Thursday, Wilson readily amends that statement. “I feel so loved” she says. “I mean this community has wrapped its arms around me, and it’s a genuine support, so I feel the love.”

Reflecting on all the accolades that have come her way in just four years, Wilson calls the exhibit “the cherry on top. … This is good for my soul tonight. I mean, I used to come in here and buy a ticket and walk these halls and think, man, what would it look like if something of mine was in a shadow box?”

What it looks like, she discovered on Thursday, is “a testament not only to my personal journey, but to the power of this community and to the people who believe in what you do,” she told the several hundred friends, family and supporters who gathered at the reception.

The exhibit, she added, is also a reminder “that being ‘tough as nails’ don’t mean that you’re unbreakable. It means that you just keep showing up with heart even when it’s hard.”

Amid an evening of looking back, Wilson is also definitely looking forward. She’s now in the midst of a summer of fair and festival appearances. “Then we kick off this tour in August,” she says, “so we’ll be running and gunning for a few months. And then hit reset again. Make some more music. I’ve been writing a bunch. It’s all good.”

Also upcoming is one important piece of unfinished business: setting a date for her wedding to fiancé Devlin (Duck) Hodges, whom she’s dated since 2021. The former NFL quarterback, now a Nashville real estate businessman, proposed to Wilson this March.

“We’re talking about it,” Wilson confirmed. “Poor thing … He made me wait four years. I’m gonna make him wait a little bit. Gotta keep him on his toes, you know!”

The site of the ceremony is also up in the air, though it probably won’t be a hometown wedding back in tiny Baskin, she affirms. “I don’t even know that part yet. At this point, we just need to toss a coin and see what happens!”

“Lainey Wilson: Tough as Nails” continues through June 2026, and entry is included with the price of museum admission.