Lainey Wilson husband Devlin “Duck” Hodges is a former NFL quarterback who now works in real estate. The two married on 10 May 2026 at Ruskin Cave in Dickson, Tennessee, after five years together and a proposal on the front porch of George Jones’ old house.
Most coverage of the couple is wedding coverage. The part that gets skipped is Hodges himself, who arrived in the NFL by a route almost nobody survives.
Who is Devlin “Duck” Hodges?
Hodges played college football at Samford University in Alabama, a school in the FCS tier rather than the television-money division, and went undrafted in 2019. The Pittsburgh Steelers signed him as a free agent anyway. He stayed in Pittsburgh through 2021, then joined the Los Angeles Rams, and later played for the Ottawa Redblacks in the Canadian Football League before retiring. He has worked in real estate since.
The nickname is older than the NFL and has a duller origin than people assume. Wilson explained it on The Bobby Bones Show: “His college football coach was like, ‘You’re one of the best quarterbacks I’ve ever worked with. And you remind me a lot of one of my favorite quarterbacks I got to work with years ago, and we called him Duck.’ And so he and the team just kind of started calling him Duck.”
So it was inherited, not earned — a coach handing down someone else’s name as a compliment, and a locker room deciding it fit.
Five years from a saloon date to the altar
Wilson and Hodges met through mutual friends in Nashville and started dating in 2021. Their first date was at a dance hall and saloon, which for a country singer and a quarterback from Alabama is almost too neat to be true.
She kept it quiet for two years, deliberately. “I said, ‘We gonna see if you’re in it for the right reasons,'” she told People. “Turns out, he is. It feels really good to talk about it.”
The reveal did not go entirely to plan. Fans worked it out a few weeks early when Wilson wore a Steelers jersey at a Pittsburgh concert, and the couple made their intended debut at the 2023 ACM Awards in May. By that November she was CMA Entertainer of the Year and thanked him from the stage.
In January 2025 she joked in a CMT interview with Bunnie XO that she might propose herself. Hodges got there first. On 12 February 2025 she announced the engagement with a photo dump from the proposal, which he had staged on the front porch of country singer George Jones’ Tennessee home, laid out with candles, red roses and framed photographs of the two of them. The ring is a cluster of diamonds on a thick diamond-set band.
The Tennessee waterfall wedding
They married on 10 May 2026 at Ruskin Cave in Dickson, Tennessee, roughly an hour west of Nashville, in a ceremony Vogue built its coverage around for the waterfall setting.
Wilson wore Oscar de la Renta. Hodges wore a bespoke suit by D. Lacquaniti with a custom bolo tie, which is the kind of detail that tells you who was setting the visual direction. She had described the brief to The Knot beforehand as “a little bit bold, a little bit Western,” and she planned it off a Pinterest board she curated with the platform.
She declined to perform at her own reception. The guest list leaned on her own industry, with Jelly Roll and Ella Langley among the country artists celebrating with them.
What Lainey Wilson says about her husband
She has been consistent on one point for three years: the appeal is that he understands the job without needing it.
“He’s a good dude. He knows what it’s like chasing a dream because he’s done that for himself,” she told The Bobby Bones Show in 2023. “He is good as gold, supports me, would never come in between anything that I’m trying to do.”
That framing makes more sense once the career arc is in view. An undrafted quarterback out of an FCS school who reaches the Steelers, moves on, plays a season in Canada and then walks away into real estate has done the whole cycle — the long-shot push, the brief arrival, the end — while she was still climbing. He had been through the part she is still in the middle of.
The CMA speech in November 2023 was the moment it stopped being managed. “This is all I’ve ever wanted. It finally feels like country music is starting to love me back,” she said from the stage, before adding: “I love you, Duck.”
Lainey Wilson husband: the questions people actually search
Are Lainey Wilson and Devlin Hodges still together?
Yes. They married in May 2026 and there has been no indication of trouble since. The engagement ran from February 2025 to the wedding, a little over a year.
What NFL team did Lainey Wilson’s husband play for?
Pittsburgh, primarily. Hodges signed with the Steelers as an undrafted free agent in 2019 and remained with them until 2021, then spent time with the Los Angeles Rams and afterwards with the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks.
What does Duck Hodges do now?
Real estate. He moved into it after retiring from football, which is why current coverage identifies him as a former NFL quarterback rather than an active one.
What is Duck Hodges’ net worth?
No verified figure exists. The numbers circulating on celebrity-finance aggregators are estimates with no disclosed method behind them, and neither Hodges nor Wilson has discussed his finances. An undrafted quarterback’s earnings over three NFL seasons and a CFL stint are a matter of contract minimums rather than headline money, but the specifics have not been confirmed by anyone in a position to know.
Do Lainey Wilson and Duck Hodges have children?
They have not announced any. Wilson turned 33 around the time of the wedding and has spoken about the marriage rather than about starting a family.
