There’s nothing reserved about a Luke Bryan show, as anyone who’s seen the singer shake it for a crowd would attest, but as a college kid in the dating scene, Bryan’s off-stage moves were a little less forward, his wife Caroline tells PEOPLE Country.

“He was always a gentleman,” says Caroline who first met Bryan when he was a senior at Georgia Southern University and she was a freshman. “We hung out as friends first and he never made a move on me. I kissed him first! He was always so scared of making a girl feel uncomfortable, he wouldn t cross a line.”

The couple, who have two boys together, dated on and off for several years before marrying in 2006, and Caroline says now that Luke, 37, has reached superstar status, the world gets to see the guy she’s always known.

“Everything that Luke has done and been like at home is coming out in public. He s not fake, he s not putting on an act,” she says. “In college, we used to go dancing in a club til 4 a.m., and he s just as silly at home as he is on stage. He walks around dancing all day, just being goofy.”