Singer Ruthie Collins Opens Up About Wedding to Rory Mitchinson and Their New Baby: ‘Happened Very Fast’ (Exclusive)

Over the course of the past two years, singer/songwriter Ruthie Collins fell in love, got married and had her first child — and she kept it all relatively quiet.

“I have always believed that life was supposed to be a beautiful romantic adventure and nothing else,” Collins, 40, tells PEOPLE. “And that’s exactly what happened. But yes, it all happened very fast.”

In a January 2022 interview with PEOPLE, Collins happily hinted that she was smack dab in the middle of a wonderful relationship. 

“I actually had a really bad break up four days before I went overseas and on tour in March of 2022 with (Americana country artist) Sam Outlaw,” Collins says. “So, I started the tour super heartbroken and was just kind of crying in every hotel room in the UK.”

But it was on the last night of that tour that Collins met an intriguing man named Rory Mitchinson. “He had a great mustache, and he still does,” the New York native laughs of Mitchinson, who just happened to be attending Collins’ show that night. “I’m a sucker for a good mustache.”

But there was far more to 32-year-old Mitchinson than just his facial hair. And according to Collins, she needed to know more about the man who seemed so different from the rest.

“That same night, we all went out for drinks and all the (band) guys ended up going back to their rooms, but Rory (Mitchinson) and I stayed and talked for hours,” Collins remembers. “It was unbelievably romantic. We walked around this ancient city with these centuries old bridges and cobblestone streets, and then he brought me back to my hotel room and just gave me a hug and then he was gone. And I was like, ‘yeah, he definitely has a girlfriend.’”

But he did not have a girlfriend. Instead, Collins said she just realized that she had found herself a gentleman.

“He sent me this long text about how honored he was to get to spend the evening with me and what a wonderful time he had, and that was the start of it all,” gushes Collins. “We just started messaging back and forth for months, and we would send each other these hour-long voice memos, and of course he’s got the most ridiculously beautiful accent in the world.”

A few months later, Mitchinson made his way to the States. 

“He came over here in June of 2022, and that was pretty much when this sort of whirlwind relationship started,” says Collins. “We went back and forth (from England) for a couple of years.”

But in September of 2023, the couple received a blessing that would change everything.

“We knew we would want a family, but I was a little older and everything, so we had already decided that we needed to start trying earlier than we probably would have if it wasn’t for my age,” says Collins, who married Mitchinson on March 20, 2024. “We fast forwarded everything, obviously for the best reason ever.”

That best reason is now known as a 5-month-old little girl by the name of Esme Winslow Mitchinson and it is she that served as the muse for Collins when she co- wrote her new single “Barefoot No Fences,” premiering exclusively on PEOPLE. 

“I got to grow up on this big farm where obviously there were no fences, and my sister and I would just run out in the backyard and play and go down to the creek and we were safe,” she says of the touching song she wrote alongside fellow songwriter Kristy Osmunson. “It’s a metaphor for life. I think that it’s so beautiful to have the freedom to explore and push boundaries and be who you want to be, but also love and be wild but know where home is. That’s the way I grew up, and I just really want that for Esme too.”