Ty Murray and Jewel Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Last week SI writer Richard Deitsch interviewed nine-time rodeo world champion and Professional Bull Riders  (http://www.pbrnow.com/) president Ty Murray and the Grammy-nominated singer Jewel for the magazine's Q&A. The couple have dated for seven years. Here are additional excerpts from the interview.

SI: How much did you know about each other when you first met?
Murray: Well, we met during the height of her first album so you would have had to live in a cave not to have heard of her.
Jewel: I was viscerally aware. I was getting tickets for Ty Murray, and I thought, "Ty Murray? Isn't he like the Elvis of the rodeo world?" I knew he was real famous in that world.

SI: Is riding a bull like anything else in another sport?
Murray: I think it's comparable to every other sport accept the stakes are a lot higher.
Jewel: Because of the danger?
Murray: Well, not just danger, but the pressure of winning, the pressure of the media, the fan expectations. And then the stakes are raised that much higher because of the danger of it. ... To me, bullriding has the same elements that other sports have as far as winning and losing and being able to stay focused. But the danger element heightens it that much more.

SI: Who do you like watching in other sports?
Murray: My favorite athlete is Peyton Manning because everything I've ever read or seen on him is work ethic. He's not about coming up with the latest end zone dance or how much showboating he can do. The only thing you ever hear said about him is how hard he works. After he throw's a touchdown pass, he's just concentrating on how he's going to throw another one
Jewel: I don't follow a lot of sports. I tend to go for personalities, so I like Lance Armstrong a lot. I feel like he was a great champion and what he did was amazing and pushed himself to the limit. I like to watch people in interviews and see how they talk and handle themselves and it makes me a bigger fan of them. I thought he handled himself well and was straightforward and down to earth and handled himself well and always just wanted to kick ass.

SI: Ty, you won six consecutive all-around titles from 1989 to '94 and a record seventh overall in '98 before you retired at 32 in 2002. Have you ever flirted with a comeback?
Murray: I never wanted to be one of the guys who makes a comeback. I think 99 out of 100 times it's pathetic. Frankly, I haven't missed it. I've been retired going on four years and I haven't missed one day. I don't know why. It was a whole my life for 32 years and I feel like I got everything out of it that I wanted to get out of it. And that's how I felt at the time of my retirement. There was nothing for me to grab. I felt like I had done everything I wanted to do.

SI: You collaborated on a song --- Til We Run Out of Road --- in 2001. How did that come about?
Jewel: Ty was about six months from announcing his retirement. He was just thinking about it. You see a lot of athletes get close to retirement and usually they wait too long. They should have retired at their prime or in their glory. It's a little bit of a, well, disgrace is a strong word, but you wish they would quit while they were ahead. It's a really hard thing to do for yourself. Ty didn't want to go downhill before he retired. He quit while he was on top still. The song is about that. The hook line is "We'll go till we're too old or until we run out of road." Sometimes you have the ability but your heart might not be in it quite the same. You have to face the facts.

SI: Is there an athlete in another sport that would make a good bullrider? Murray: Gymnasts. I don't know if there are athletes any better than them as far as strength, flexibility, body control, body awareness, air sense and balance. You would be hard pressed to find a more athletic person from a physical standpoint. But you are talking about one little aspect. You can take a guy with the dead-on physical attributes, but if he doesn't have the mental capacity to take on someone this scary, and to be able to stay fluid and think clearly and react well and still be aware, it doesn't matter if you have all the physical attributes in the world. I've seen guys that maybe weren't the strongest or fastest, but they had a mind for it.

SI: What people from other sports have told you they admired what you do? Murray: Roy Jones Jr. We got to be friends about 10 or 11 years ago. He really had an appreciation for my sport and I really had an appreciation for him as an athlete. I think we had a mutual respect and that was something that brought us together. I've watched him fight quite a bit. I think there's a mutual respect.
Jewel: We've gone to heavyweight championship fights and George Foreman will be there and he'll work his way through the crowd to talk to Ty. I sang the anthem before the 2001 World Series and a couple of the guys came back and said hi to Ty and knew he was. It seems to happen where we go, athletes tend to know who he is.

SI: Have you ever checked into hotels under an alias?
Jewel: We'd have to kill you if we told you. But I checked in under Emily Dickinson for awhile. I had a gal at the Four Seasons ask me for my ID. My ID wasn't going to have that name on it. I didn't want to say it was an alias. She looked at me with surprise and said, "Emily Dickinson? You're a writer right?" Murray: I've just used the same one for like 10 years. Not giving it up.

SI: What's the one word that comes to mind when describing each other? Jewel: Don't do this. He'll say something rotten.
SI: Tough to say something rotten in a word?
Jewel: Not for him (laughs).
SI: Try it?
Murray: One word? Artistic.
SI: Jewel?
Jewel: Pretty tough to do a word. But I've said it before: I think he's a stand-up guy in a world of flakes.