To Joey, With Love, a documentary chronicling the lives of husband-and-wife singer-songwriters Joey and Rory Feek, debuted in theaters through Fathom Events earlier this fall. The film, releasing this week on home video from Provident Films, was intended to capture the simplified life of the Academy of Country Music-winning duo as they welcomed a newborn baby, Indiana, but also soon captured the precious final months of Joey, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the baby was born.
Rory, now a single father, provides the only commentary on through the deeply personal film, offering glimpses of hope even while walking through the darkest times a family will face. In an exclusive interview with Reel Faith, he offered his own take on why the film resonates with viewers and what the family’s plans are for Christmas.
Obviously you didn’t document all of this anticipating doing a feature film but it seems that you had plenty of material. At what point was the idea of turning it into a film introduced and what were your first thoughts about sharing something so deeply personal?
Though I just captured our lives without having any idea why, there were times that Joey and I talked about the possibility of it being a documentary or something else. We would discuss what it might be—a film about simplifying and homesteading, or having a little one with Down Syndrome, just thinking out loud. We even discussed in our last few weeks together. Never really having a plan, but so thankful to be capturing all these moments in our lives forever. Believing that God would reveal it if what was meant to be something bigger than just for Indy and I and our older girls to have to watch together. A few weeks after we were home from Indiana, as I was looking through the footage that I had filmed, I started realizing what it was. That it was about her. About us. About hope. And I called my friend Ben Howard from Provident Films and was telling about what I was seeing on the screen. He is how it became a film. He immediately knew what it needed to be and that there were people all over the country and world that would want to see Joey’s story, and ours.
Your story does not shy away from the hardships but it also showed hope and inspiration. How intentional was that?
It is what life was. What life is. It’s very difficult at times and incredible beautiful at others. Mostly it’s both at exactly the same time. I had to show that if I wanted to be honest about the story we were telling, that God had been telling with our lives.
What have you encountered as more people have heard your story?
I think mostly encouragement — people being encouraged by the film and Joey’s journey and people encouraging us in our journey from here. It’s been wonderful to see.
I know you have done some Gaither events recently. How has that experience been?
It was wonderful to be with Bill and Gloria and the other artists and staff who put on their events. Joey and I always loved those times together and that hasn’t changed now that it’s just me. I love the love story that Bill and Gloria tell with their lives and music and also how they include and lift up other artists and other stories as they’re telling theirs. They’ve been a big inspiration to Joey and I over the years. They still are.
Will you continue to pursue your music career?
I have no plans to write or perform any music in the near future.
What would you like viewers to take away from your story?
That everything is going to be okay, even if it’s not okay. That God is bigger than our fears, and that love, real love, is the greatest of all stories that we can tell.
What are your plans for Christmas?
We will drive back to Indiana for a couple of days just before Christmas to celebrate an early Christmas with Joey’s mama and daddy and sisters and their kids. Then we’ll come back and have Christmas here at home, at our farmhouse. My two sisters and their families live in the houses on both sides of us now, so we’ll all spend Christmas eve together at Marcy’s house and get together on Christmas day for dinner in the big barn where we used to film our TV show and have our concerts. That will be nice. Then Indiana and I are going to take a trip to Key West. Just her and I and find a spot near the water and watch the New Year come in. Joey and I went there for three years in a row and did that . . . so I want to take Indy this year and spend time thinking about all God has done this year and be prayerful for what He has in store next.
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