Carrie Underwood is one of the most famous voices in country music, but when she's not performing, her professional athlete husband, Mike Fisher, is happy to take "center" stage, literally. The Nashville Predators center is currently battling it out for the Stanley Cup with his teammates, as they fight for the championship along with three other teams. While she is fiercely proud of her spouse, Carrie had a steep learning curve when they started dating.

"I'm from Oklahoma. We're all about football and stuff like that there," she explains to Canadian radio station 93.7 JRfm. "We had a very, very, very minor league team that I never saw play, so this has been a whole new world to me. Fortunately I have a lot of friends who were able to help me along for the first few months of me learning."

With her husband now playing in Music City, after being traded by the Ottawa Senators mid-season, the new bride attends as many games as possible. "It's obviously been a little easier since we're in Nashville now," she explains. "I was on tour last year, so I missed pretty much all the stuff in 2010, but I'd say [I went to] 10 or 15 games."

The Predators' contention for the Stanley Cup is causing a little bit of friction on the home front -- literally -- thanks to a pact by the team players to all grow beards during the play-offs. "We're almost at the point where we're having kissing refusal, because it hurts! It hurts my face," she acknowledges. "There's actually a lot of really good-looking players on the Predators team, and now they all look like mountain men."

His facial hair isn't the only source of tension inside their home. "He's not the nicest guy either," Carrie admits about her dedicated husband. "He's focused on game day, and then with the beard, I'm like, 'Baby, you look mean, so you need to work on being a little extra nice to make up for the beard.'"

Now that Carrie is off the road, and working on a new album, she also has time to give in to another guilty pleasure: watching 'American Idol.' "I think they have a really eclectic group of contestants this year, and I dig the judges," gushes the 'Idol' Season 4 champ. "They're doing a good job. They're staying positive and I like that. Kids need to be encouraged."

While she won't reveal her personal favorite, she does admit she is rooting for someone specific. "I never support anyone publicly. I voted last night, by the way," she acknowledges. "The girls are doing such a great job ... It's cool to see them. And there are some youngsters, and you're watching them grow up in a few months."

The perennially positive singer is happy to be a role model for the aspiring artists on the show. "I always get the inside scoop on what the contestants are like, and I hear they really have done their homework," she notes. "They've looked at stuff I've done and the way I carried myself, so I think they have their heads on right, and it will be interesting to see what happens after the show is over."

Carrie had an up-close-and-personal moment with this year's judge, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, when they performed together at the ACM Awards earlier this year. The rocking duet, which included her song, 'Undo It,' and his classic, 'Walk This Way,' ended in a kiss seen around the world. According to Mrs. Fisher, looks were a bit deceiving.

"We didn't quite touch lips. It was as close as two people could come to kissing without actually [kissing]," she admits. "Afterward I called Mike, because he wasn't there, and I was like, 'Did you see it? How did I do?' and he was like, 'It was great, except for that part.'"

She may have had the opportunity to perform with one of rock music's biggest legends, but it's another collaboration -- her powerful performance of the hymn, 'How Great Thou Art' with Vince Gill during 'Girls Night Out: The Superstar Women of Country - The Concert of the Year' -- that has garnered more than five million hits on You Tube. Ending with a thunderous standing ovation, the Opry member was as surprised as the audience by the powerful performance.

"It's really funny how it came about," she explains. "We were talking about what we were going to sing together ... I'd throw out something and then he'd throw out something, and we couldn't get it figured out. Finally he had mentioned in passing 'How Great Thou Art,' and I do part of that in my shows. I was like, 'He knows that one, I know that one,' let's just do that one so we can lock it in and get to working on what we're going to do with it. It just came about as what we had left. Obviously, we both like the song. He said, 'Way to pick the one song I can't sing; I can't get through it. I'll cry.' It ended up being so much more than we thought."

Carrie is spending much of the next few months at home, working on her new album. Watch her performance of 'How Great Thou Art' here.

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