Kelly Clarkson recently struggled to keep her composure while on live television when country music star Thomas Rhett and his wife Lauren Akins popped in for Clarkson’s at-home edition of…
Kelly Clarkson recently struggled to keep her composure while on live television when country music star Thomas Rhett and his wife Lauren Akins popped in for Clarkson’s at-home edition of her show — and told the heartwarming story of the adoption of their now-4-year-old daughter Willa Gray Akins.
“I just thought it was really cool,” Lauren Akins told the former “American Idol” standout-turned-daytime-host of the “Kelly Clarkson Show.”
She continued: “We’d talked about it off and on, but it wasn’t something that we had sat down and had, like, a full-on adoption conversation.”
Lauren Akins, 30, revealed to Clarkson that her own mother was adopted and that for her “whole life” she had “always talked about adopting.”
Lauren Akins went on to open up about her first meeting with Willa Gray, who would become her future daughter, in 2016 during a trip to Uganda with the organization 147 Million Orphans. She shared an image of the baby girl to her social media page and after connecting with Rhett, also 30, via FaceTime, Lauren Akins said she was compelled to find a “forever home” for the little girl.
“I was, like, so moved. I mean, the second I touched her, it was, like, electric,” she said.
