Leanna Crawford, an artist based out of Nashville, surprised her husband, NBA basketball player Cody Zeller, and left him in tears with her emotional composition, “Vow to be yours,”—a song that depicts their beautiful relationship and incorporates traditional vows.
Twenty-eight-year-old Ms. Crawford, who originally hails from a small West Coast farm town, always loved music and found it to be her calling.
“In high school, I really felt God calling me to do music after I went on a mission trip,” the singer/songwriter told the Epoch Times. “I really felt Him calling me ... to write songs that would encourage others and hopefully bring people hope.”
As she embarked on that journey, doors opened. Working hard to balance her education and her growing music career, Ms. Crawford went on her first tour as an artist in 2017.
“I was still in college at that point,” she said. “I ended up finishing later. I took a little break to go on tour.”
She’s been touring ever since. In 2018, she was introduced to her future husband, Mr. Zeller—a player for the New Orleans Pelicans—through a mutual friend while attending a concert. At the time, she shared a few laughs with him, and the two just followed each other on Instagram.
“We really hadn’t talked,” Ms. Crawford said. “Maybe he wished me a happy birthday on Instagram or Merry Christmas.”
However, in 2020, like many other artists who struggled to get any shows due to Covid restrictions, Ms. Crawford was looking for ways to continue her music career. She came across an opportunity to lead worship songs at a camp.
“It was a really sweet camp with a bunch of kids,” she said. “It was actually a camp for foster kids.”
Since the camp was held outside Mr. Zeller’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, Ms. Crawford’s mom and sister encouraged her to send him a message.
After being initially reluctant, she looked up their conversation on Instagram and noticed that she missed several messages from him in the past months. Ms. Crawford then messaged him, saying: “Sorry, I never responded. But I’m actually in town if you want to come hang out with me and a bunch of kids.”
Mr. Zeller responded immediately and ended up visiting the camp every day that week.
After the camp, the two of them went on their first official date on Ms. Crawford’s birthday.
With their busy schedules that involved Ms. Crawford touring and Mr. Zeller playing for the New Orleans Pelicans, they kept their relationship long-distance until their wedding.
“Long-distance is definitely hard,” Ms. Crawford said. “But when it’s the right person, you just make it work.”
Fortunately, Ms. Crawford and Mr. Zeller were able to see each other often and that helped them stay connected. However, throughout their relationship—and now marriage—they’ve stayed intentional.
“We have our little routine at night,” Ms. Crawford said. “We play a card game on our phones, and we do something like that every night.”
This designated time has helped them stay grounded. Being grounded is one of the things that really stood out to Ms. Crawford about Mr. Zeller.
“He’s very steady,” she said. “He’s very even. I never have to worry or wonder what version of him I’m going to get because he’s always steady even when life is stressful.”
She also notes his humor. “He’s hilarious. One of the things that I first realized about him … was he’s not afraid to make fun of himself; he has no ego.”
Two years into their relationship, Mr. Zeller proposed to Ms. Crawford on a hike.
“I wasn’t feeling very good,” Ms. Crawford said. “My sister Lindsay was like, ‘No, you’re getting up the top of this mountain because you’re going to feel a lot better going down.’”
Mr. Zeller surprised her with a written letter that had dates of the most important events in their relationship.
“I was crying just because it was sweet,” Ms. Crawford said. “And there’s a little puzzle—the first letter of every sentence, spelled ‘Will You Marry Me?’
“I was in tears. And we were on the edge of the cliff and he got down on one knee.”
As their wedding approached, Ms. Crawford thought about writing a song for the wedding though she claims she’s not the type of artist who typically writes romantic love songs. After spending several months struggling with different approaches to the song, she finally found her perfect angle.
“I was at my bachelorette party with all my girls,“ she said. ”And we were talking about whether Cody and I were going to do the traditional vows, or we were going to write our own.”
This conversation gave her the idea for her song.
Once the idea struck, she went into another room to get to work.
“I started to write the chorus of the song,” Ms. Crawford said. She continued to work on the rest of the song as the wedding grew closer, but she kept it to herself, giving her the freedom to create without others expecting anything from her.
“But when I took the pressure off, I finally was able to sit down and finish it a few weeks before the wedding,” she said.
Ms. Crawford describes the flow of emotions she felt as she wrote the song. Thinking of the church they were getting married in, she said, “I was kind of picturing the scene … dreaming about us standing there. I was sort of picturing all our friends and family [there]. That was the beginning.”
She also thought of all the experiences she'd had with Mr. Zeller while they were dating. “He had sent me a text when we first started dating back in 2020. And he was so sweet. But he [said]: ‘Every day with you is my favorite day.’”
Ms. Crawford carefully crafted his message and put it in the second verse of the song.
Through the song, she really wanted to capture the essence of her hope and devotion to Mr. Zeller.
“I promised to be yours forever, and I’m just so excited to do this life with you,” Ms. Crawford wrote, alluding to Mr. Zeller. “There’s going to be days that are hard. We’re going to have high days, we’re going to have low days and everything in between. And all of that will just be a wonderful, like, beautiful adventure that we get to do together.”
With her song finally ready, Ms. Crawford texted the wedding planner to find out the best time for her to perform her song. They decided the best time for her to surprise him with it would be during the wedding while he was dancing with his mom.
So, as planned, on Aug. 26, 2023, at their reception at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Ms. Crawford surprised her husband.
“When he finished his dance with his mom, he turned around expecting me to be standing there,” Ms. Crawford said, “And I wasn’t. Then he turned around again because everybody’s looking on stage, and there I am.”
Surprised and in tears, Ms. Crawford said he was “shocked in the best way.”
Ms. Crawford and Mr. Zeller are both devoted Christians; their whole wedding ceremony “was beautiful and really Jesus-filled, and I felt like it was very hopeful and encouraging, which is what we really wanted.”
Beyond just their ceremony, Ms. Crawford and her husband hope to have their faith at the center of their relationship as well.
“We pray always that God [will] be the center and that we grow closer to Him, and that makes us closer to each other,” she said.
