Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood 'Bicker' Like Pals Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: 'Works for Us Too' (Exclusive)

Whether they’re harmonizing on stage or swinging hammers on a build site, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood make an undeniably great pair. 

The country superstars spent the week of Oct. 1 hosting the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project — which the former President and First Lady launched in 1984 — down in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they built 27 single-family affordable homes.

“After Katrina in '07, we fell in love with Habitat for Humanity. We knew we loved the Carters and we fell more in love with them just getting a chance to work alongside them,” Yearwood, 59, tells PEOPLE of how she and Brooks first got involved with the organization.  “We love what Habitat for Humanity is about: spreading love. It is about creating community.”

Brooks and Yearwood have been married since 2005, and Brooks says that the Carters have inspired them not only as humanitarians but as a couple as well.

“They’ve inspired us in a lot of ways, in the ways you expect: humanity, humbleness, work ethic. But they’ve also inspired us by their example as husband and wife,” Brooks, 61, explains. “We worked beside them for the last 15 years, and you notice right away they bicker back and forth about the right way to do things. That kind of works for us too!” 

Yearwood agrees, and she takes the example the former President and First Lady have set to heart. 

“To whom much is given, much is expected,” she says. “We’ll never fill their shoes, but we’re doing the best we can.” 

Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford is grateful to have the country couple lending their talents to the site. 

“They’re carrying on that amazing legacy. Garth and Trisha bring attention to the great need for affordable housing,” Reckford says. “They represent the hope and the joy of building community.”

For Yearwood, the project's impact is exemplified in the people who get to reside in the new homes.

“We built in Haiti after the [2010] earthquake. When we went back [the next year], we got to see a different look on those homeowners’ faces,” she recalls. “There was pride. They had built gardens; they had painted. I carry that with me everywhere.” 

And for Brooks, there’s one part of the finished house that never fails to make him emotional.

“It’s always the front door. It’s a ceremony: The first person through that door is the one wearing the red shirt that says ‘Homeowner.’ When they walk through that door, it just kills me,” he says.
“The cheers and the tears — their journey inside their house has begun. And the Carters said it best: If you go to sleep with a roof over your head, you’re spoiled.” 

As for the hard skills the pair have picked up along the way? They’re aplenty. 

“The first time we got on a site, we thought we were going to take some photographs, maybe hold some tools. We framed a wall that day,” says Yearwood. “You learn the skill you need in the moment.” 

Echoes Brooks: “What I love is, nobody cares about anything other than ‘Can you swing a hammer?’ Color doesn’t matter. Male, female—doesn’t matter,” he says. 

“It’s just, ‘How much do you want to work together? How much love have you got in that hammer?’”

For more on Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.