Before they both found lasting love, Jessica Simpson once playfully imagined a future with NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt Jr., even joking about a treehouse wedding.
The amusing anecdote came to light during a conversation between Amy Earnhardt and her husband about the early days of their relationship. Amy revealed that the pop star “tried to fish my man,” as she put it.
“It’s 2008, maybe [2009]. We had just started dating, and I think I’m still living in Jacksonville, but I come up to Daytona to hang out with Dale. And I hear that Jessica Simpson’s at the racetrack. We’re the same age. We both came from Texas, so I’ve always kind of been a fan of hers,” Amy recalled on her “Bless Your ‘Hardt” podcast.
Amy explained she was initially excited at the prospect of meeting the singer behind hits like “I Wanna Love You Forever.”
“And I’m like, ‘Hey, Dale, do you think that you could get Jessica Simpson to come to the bus so I could meet her?’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t think that’d be a really good idea.’ And I was like, ‘Why not?’”
“And he shows me this clip … of her doing an interview earlier that day, how she had had a dream that she and Dale Jr. Got married in a treehouse.”
That’s when Amy put her foot down.
“And I’m like, ‘Yeah… don’t bring that b—- over here. It’s a good idea,” Amy joked, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Laughing along.
The moment, she said, left a lasting impression. “I haven’t bought a Jessica Simpson shoe or a bag — you understand, how she’s got all the things — ever since then. I was like, she was f—ing trying to fish my man … Yes, she was. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
The potential encounter occurred in the late 2000s, as Amy and Dale Jr.’s relationship was blossoming and Simpson was establishing herself as a pop music star. This story offers a glimpse into the often-unseen dynamics of celebrity encounters and relationships.
Simpson later began dating former NFL player Eric Johnson in May 2010. The couple became engaged six months later and married in 2014 after welcoming their first two children, Maxwell and Ace. Their family grew with the arrival of daughter Birdie in 2019.
In November 2024, Johnson was photographed without his wedding ring amid Simpson’s focus on a music comeback.
“She’s working on music and splits her time between Los Angeles and Nashville. Eric spends all of his time in LA, where the kids go to school,” a source told People at the time.
“Jess and Eric highly much live separate lives.”
Meanwhile, Dale Jr. And Amy married in 2016 and now share two daughters, Isla, 7, and Nicole, 5.
