“Darling, I loved your performance. I just love your new songs.”

Brooke Eden received those words of praise from an older gentleman after a recent performance in Los Angeles. Amidst a crowd of mostly twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, there was this man, whom the 36-year-old Eden describes as “a 70ish-year-old cowboy [donning a] cowboy get-up from head-to-toe — the hat, the Wranglers, the nice starched western shirt, and boots.”

“Your hat is missing a pin,” the cowboy added, proceeding to remove a pin from his hat and fasten it to Eden’s hat with the explanation, “I earned this in the gay rodeo from 1988.”

Eden proudly holds her hat up to the Zoom camera to show off the small pin, the only one adorning her pristine light blond topper. “I’ll cherish this forever,” she says, a gleam in her eyes.

As it happens, that older gay cowboy was just one among many from the gay rodeo circuit that the lesbian country starlet met during a recent tour promoting a pair of charming, festive new singles — “Giddy Up” and “Rainbow Rodeo.” Touring around what she calls “different honky tonks throughout the United States,” each show featured local line dancers who were taught the moves in advance to “Giddy Up.”

“Someone from the gay rodeo has come up to me after every single show,” says Eden, who recently learned that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the International Gay Rodeo Association.

The year 2025, of course, also marks the 50th anniversary of Capital Pride, and Eden and her team had been eyeing plans for this year’s WorldPride DC for the past few years. “We’ve been talking to the coordinators for a couple of years, and just thinking, ‘How crazy cool would that be,’ but never getting my hopes up that I would get booked for it.”

Read Next

Scott Thompson Rips Into GLAAD in Blistering New Show

Eden downplays the idea that she deserves props for perseverance, having stayed the course in pursuit of a successful music career after failing to gain much traction through American Idol, which the South Florida native tried out for not once but twice during college in 2008 and 2011.

“Ask Morgan Wallen, Maren Morris, [and any] number of country artists who tried out for American Idol that didn’t end up on the show,” she says. “I feel like that’s kind of a very common string with everyone who’s in country music. But for me, that is kind of the outlaw spirit that is within me that is just like, we don’t give up.

“I was brought up in a Southern household where you work hard for your money, and you grind and you hustle until you get to where you want to go,” she continues. “And my music career has been a huge example of that. There were so many times when I got pushed off the horse and I probably should have just not gotten back up, and gotten a nine-to-five job somewhere. But that was never an option for me.”

She moved to Nashville and snagged a record deal before she was out. “I then had to navigate that whole situation [of] coming out and trying to dig out a space there for not only myself but an entire community of people who love like I do and want to express their love for somebody and feel represented in country music,” she says.

Read Next

Michael Urie Puts Queer Stories Center Stage with Pride Plays

Eden met her future wife, Hilary Hoover, in 2015, almost immediately after landing a lucrative record deal. That was quite a “curveball,” she says. “She actually worked at my record label and took me out on a radio tour. It just complicated everything, especially since I was doing something brand new. I’m out on the road, I’m meeting [with executives at] 165 country music radio stations on this kind of nine-month tour of a lifetime throughout the United States, and I meet Hilary. It was so clear to both of us that we’re each other’s person.”

It would be another five years before Eden was finally ready to come out officially, at the start of 2021, two weeks before TJ Osborne of the Brothers Osborne did the same.

A few months after coming out, Trisha Yearwood called to express her support, but more importantly to ask if Eden would join her on stage at the Grand Ole Opry to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Yearwood’s hit “She’s In Love With The Boy.” There was a fabulous hitch: The two would sing the song with altered lyrics as a new queer duet, “She’s In Love With The Girl.”

“I was a little nervous, I’m not going to lie,” Eden says. “After we got off stage at the Grand Ole Opry, Tricia and I were high-fiving and hugging and just so happy that we got the reaction that we did and that it went over so well, and no tomatoes were thrown at us.”

Read Next

Shooting and Stabbings Rock Dupont Circle During WorldPride

By this point, Eden had already broached the subject of her upcoming wedding, prompting Yearwood to ask, “Am I going to be a flower girl? Am I going to be a bridesmaid? Can I officiate? What can I do?” Not only did Yearwood officiate, but her husband, Garth Brooks, “sang us down the aisle with ‘To Make You Feel My Love.'”

Recalls Eden of the moment, “To say that still is a ‘pinch me’ thing because it’s wild how people you have looked up to your whole entire life for being incredible musicians and country artist are just great humans.”

Ultimately, it was singing with Yearwood at the Grand Ole Opry that gave Eden the first real sense that she could be herself and a country artist. “I don’t have to decide between the two,” she says. “Maybe it’s okay that I’m both.”

Eden says it “became a really big mission for me to infuse queer joy into country music, because country music is all about three chords and the truth, and our truth hasn’t been told. And to get to be able to tell that truth is so important to me.” These days, her truth includes being the wife of Hilary, who continues to serve as Eden’s tour manager, and also as the second mother to the duo’s six-month-old boy, Beckham.

Beckham will join the mothers on select concert dates this year, although he will be with the grandparents while they venture to D.C. for WorldPride.

“This summer is kind of like my dream summer so far,” Eden says. “When I started telling my truth and living my life out loud, I didn’t know what shows would look like and what performing would look like, and it’s just been so cool to get to play Prides and county fairs. There are so many different functions that I get to play at. This summer, I’m playing WeHo Pride, which is so exciting. I’m playing Arlington Pride with Trixie Mattel, and Market Days in August.

“But I have to say the one I’m the most excited about is WorldPride,” she says. “To get to be a part of something that huge and so uniting in our country’s capital is just next-level dreamy.”

Brooke Eden performs on Sunday, June 8, at the WorldPride Street Festival + Concert on the Capitol Stage, 3rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW at approximately 4:45 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public. Visit www.worldpridedc.org.

A VIP Experience Ticket, including access to an expanded VIP section with front-of-stage viewing, lounge, private restrooms, and bars with complimentary or discounted food and drink, is available. For pricing and availability, visit www.tickets.capitalpride.org.

Visit www.brookeeden.com.

This article originally appeared in The Official 2025 WorldPride Guide co-produced by the Capital Pride Alliance and Metro Weekly. To read full the WorldPride Guide, click here.