Songfacts®:

• Some Christian worshipers end the Lord's Prayer with the words "forever and ever, amen." It's a statement of unequivocal faith that in this song is directed to a person. Travis promises to always be true, assuring the lady that even though he was wild and foolish in his younger days, he's all-in this time.
• The country songwriters Don Schlitz and Paul Overstreet wrote this song. They previously teamed to write Travis' 1985 hit "On the Other Hand"; Schlitz is most famous for writing "The Gambler," and Overstreet might be best known for the Kenny Chesney hit "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy."
  
  In a Songfacts interview with Overstreet, he told the story behind the song: "I had played about 36 holes of golf that day, and Don says, 'I've got this idea we have to write.' His new fiancée's little boy was learning the Lord's Prayer, and he was going around saying 'forever and ever amen' after everything. He would say, 'Mommy, I love you. Forever and ever, amen.' So Don said, 'We've got to write this.' I said, 'How about tomorrow?' He says, 'No, now.'"
  
  They got together on Overstreet's front porch that night and composed the song by candlelight. Confident it was a hit, they recorded a demo the next day and sent it to Travis, who made it the lead single to his second album, Always & Forever. It was indeed a hit, spending three weeks at the top of the Country chart, longer than any other song in 1987.
• Paul Overstreet included an Easter Egg to his wife Julie in the lines:
  
  Honey, I don't care, I ain't in love with your hair
  And if it all fell out, well, I'd love you anyway
  
  Julie is a hairdresser, and soon after they got married, she took Paul's mom to the salon where she cut and dyed her hair. If at this point you're thinking that working on your mother-in-laws hair might be a bad idea, you'd be right.
  
  "It came out green," Paul said. "I was like, 'Oh, no. This is not a good start.'"
  
  When he and Don Schlitz were writing the song, they tried to work this story into the second verse. Instead of having the guy in the song hold true even if his girl's hair turns green, they ended up imagining it falling out, with his love still holding true.
• In the foreword of Paul Overstreet's 2001 memoir, which he titled Forever and Ever, Amen, Randy Travis wrote that this is his favorite of Overstreet's songs. "I consider myself very fortunate each time I stand before and audience and sing his songs. More often than any other time, I see the powerful effect his words have on people."
• At the time, Travis was involved with his manager, Lib Hatcher. They got married in 1991, but it wasn't forever and ever. They went through a nasty, high-profile divorce that was finalized in 2011, with the couple suing each other and Lib accusing Randy of infidelity. In 2013, Travis got engaged to Mary Davis, the woman Lib claimed he was cheating with. A short time later, Travis suffered a stroke that nearly killed him and left his memory and mobility impaired. They went ahead with the wedding, but not until 2015.
  
  Travis published his memoir in 2019, which, like Overstreet's, he titled Forever and Ever, Amen. In it, he comes clean about the choices he made and writes a lot about redemption.
• The lyrics about loving a girl even after her hair falls out were written in a humorous tone, but they had a profound effect on at least one young cancer patient whose treatment made her hair fall out. "I always feel like God uses things in certain ways," Paul Overstreet told Songfacts. "She wouldn't even go out and play because she was embarrassed that she lost her hair. She wouldn't play with her friends. Then when she heard that song, she said, 'If Randy Travis could love somebody without hair, my friends should be able to love me.' And she started going out and playing with her friends again. Music is so amazing how it touches people's lives."
• Ronan Keating, who had a #1 UK hit with his cover of "When You Say Nothing At All," also written by Schlitz and Overstreet, released a version of "Forever And Ever, Amen" as a duet with Shania Twain on his album Twenty Twenty, released in (yep) 2020.
• Paul Overstreet, who co-wrote this song, had a different artist in mind. "When we wrote 'Forever and Ever, Amen,' I wanted to take it to George Jones," he said in an American Songwriter interview. "Our publishing company wanted to take it to Randy. So, they got that song."