Silas House, who penned the script for the video, noted on Instagram that they believe it might be “the first-ever country music video with a gay storyline to be released by a major label,” which Childers told NPR was important to him because he has a cousin he was close to growing up who is gay.

“He graduated from Northern Kentucky, went to Chicago and never came back,” he recalled. “And [I was] just thinking about him not having a music video on CMT that spoke to him.”

And despite a tragic ending, the video doesn’t depict the two as struggling with their sexualities, or living isolated from the world after deciding to be together. It balances the the realistic bad with the aspirational good, while matching the overall melancholy tone of the song itself to an effective end.

“If you look at the way rural, working class and poor people, Black people, gay people are portrayed, especially on TV, it focuses a lot on the despair and not enough on the joy,” House said. “We wanted to have the joy in there. Because that’s what makes a full life, right?”