As fate would have it: most girls from a small town would totally be blown away by all the attention and press, the money and fame. Not Carrie ...

Carrie Underwood must have been sprinkled with magic dust. It's like something sunny is happening. Her naturally warm-toned skin makes her look like she just came back from a beach vacation. Her big brown eyes, not to sound cheesy, sort of twinkle when she looks at you. She's just so pretty--even prettier than she looks on TV--it's slightly unnerving. Just ... wow.

When we meet Carrie, she's seated on a couch in her dressing room at the Late Show with David Letterman. She's just finished singing live. Comfy in a brown Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt, distressed jeans and Ugg boots, we can't help complimenting her in about five different categories, starting with her makeup. "Thanks, but I didn't do it," she says, suggesting that any girl would look that good after a half hour with the pro who dolled her up for the performance. We move on to gush about her hair, which is perfectly tousled in long barrel curls. "Thanks," she says. And her new album Some Hearts, which debuted on country and pop charts at No. 1 and set a debut sales record of more than 2 million worldwide, making it a certified double-platinum and the fastest selling debut in country music history. "Thanks."

Then, silence. She smiles slightly with no teeth showing, a nonverbal cue that she's ready for the questions to start, watching us as if to say, "You have me for an hour, then I'm on a plane to my next gig and can't help you out." Tick-tock. Suddenly we're a little nervous. Is that Gatorade? The dressing room is stocked with the stuff. "Help yourself," she says without any sound of a country twang. She crosses her legs and rests a delicate hand on her knee, five perfect French tips. She sighs. Polite waiting. How many interviews did she do today?

So far, she's so not what we expected. We thought Carrie would be sugary sweet, the maybe clueless country girl from Checotah, Okla., who found a winning lottery ticket while she was in town buying seed at a tack store or something. We were sure that anyone whose hometown has a population that's less than a city college's would have to be blown away by the attention and press, the money and fame. When the first season of Idol aired four years ago, this girl was working as a cashier at Albert's One Stop gas station, earning money for college. There has to be some girl-next-doorness to satisfy our expectations of what the American Idol producers had painted her to be. Where's the "bumpkin makes it big" farm girl who appeared on the jumbo monitor behind Carrie nearly every time she performed?

From Minimum Wage To The Big Stage

Even though we weren't necessarily looking for a homespun clueless girl, it was a pleasant surprise to find such a sophisticated and smart beauty. Carrie is completely chill. It is true that she grew up ranch-style with two older sisters and that she adores animals--she's been a vegetarian since she was 13--but the small-town upbringing made her real and humble, not simple or unworldly.

"Before the show, I'd never really been away from home--college was only an hour away," Carrie tells us. "The L.A. lifestyle was new and confusing. I learned so much on the show about myself. And this ..." she motions a hand toward the open window that's allowing in high-volume city noise from the hectic New York street below. "I'm fine with this. My sisters wouldn't like it so much, but I think the city is exciting."

It's another busted expectation that Carrie isn't freaking about her new life. Even though she says the fame deal was tough at first (it's been a year since she won her Idol title), Carrie comes off as totally relaxed with the demands and chaos of her still-new celebrity status. "I was built for this," she says. "I feel like everyone has a destiny, a path they're supposed to be on. Even though I dreamed about doing this, doing what I love, I am also practical so I didn't count on it. I didn't think I would win."

It's a pretty amazing (and sad, when you think about it) fact that more people voted in the 2005 Idol final than the last two presidential elections combined. Does Carrie consider her win, and everything that's followed, a glam case of old-fashioned good luck? "One minute, I'm an everyday college student rolling out of bed and going to class in my pajamas and, now, I'm doing a press interview two seconds after I sang on Letterman," she says. "It's like I woke up and had a different life. So am I lucky? Yes, I do feel lucky. I think of myself as an extremely lucky person."

Carrie makes it clear that her luck started way earlier than Idol. "I was born into a great family, I was raised well, and I have really good friends--that's first and foremost," she says, adjusting her jeans that are tucked into her Uggs. "But I had my share of second place," she says, referring to her collection of honorable mention ribbons and trophies still in her bedroom at home.

She started singing in her church choir and had lead roles in a few school musicals, but she continued to enter country fair contests and talent shows for prizes such as a $25 savings bond, which she would save for college. "I competed in a lot of stuff, and I didn't win. Ever. I never won a single one. That was when I was 12, 13, 14 years old. But I didn't need to win. If I got third and got a little trophy or money for school, that made me happy."

She was happy because she was performing. Sure, it was a local fair, but there she was onstage, a country-western singer. "When I was entering talent contests, usually my mom made my outfits, very flashy. I was a human Barbie doll," she says with genuine affection for her mom. "My morn built one outfit around a pair of three-dollar boots--they were red and black and had this whole design goin' on. I usually did my own makeup, which I'm sure was inappropriate for a girl my age. And the hair was always pretty big! I used sponge rollers and would sleep on them to torture myself the night before. I'm pretty sure I sang 'Wild One' by Faith Hill. There was another girl that sang the same song right before me, and she forgot her words for, like, half the song, and she still beat me! But you couldn't have told me second or third place wasn't cool."

Win or lose, it was the game that mattered. "That's just the way life was, and it was fine with me," she says with a shrug. "Even if nothing ever happened, I learned a lot from all the shows I did. That's how destiny works. Everything you do in life, you learn something from it that will help you along the way."

Destiny's (Country) Child

Carrie was in her senior year at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla., studying to become a broadcast journalist, when she decided to audition for American Idol. Her mom drove her 400 miles to St. Louis, where she sang Martina McBride's "Phones Are Ringing All Over Town" for the infamous judging trio.

Welcome to Hollywood! Her first time on an airplane took her to Los Angeles, where she performed--and transformed--for 19 weeks on the show. On May 25, 2005, Carrie won, her Idol title almost instantly elevating her to Kelly Clarkson status. That might seem a given after winning, but think about it: You might know who Clay, Reuben and Fantasia are, but are they on magazine covers, outselling veteran musicians, debuting at No. 1? Carrie's success right out of the gate is impressive. Her star quality is big ... and getting bigger.

Last summer, the Idol tour put Carrie on stage 44 times in nearly as many cities. Her CD Some Hearts came out on Arista in the fall, earning her a bunch of Academy of Country Music Award nominations. "The award I am really hanging my hopes high on is the 'new female' award," says Carrie. "I only get one chance to win that. The other ones? I could be in the music business for 20 years, and I'll have plenty of time to win those. But the one that would mean, like, incredibly the most, is 'female of the year.' But I'm not expecting to win that." The awards will be doled out on May 23 (catch it live at 8 p.m. on CBS). Carrie says she thinks it will go to Sara Evans. "She seems so nice, and she deserves it." Carrie regularly mentions her respect for country music artists and fans. "Country music is a very loyal group of people, and country fans are extremely supportive," she says. "There are a lot more than you think. Some of the top sold-out tours are country music. I think Kenny Chesney had the No. 3 tour last summer, and I'll be on tour with him the second half of his tour this July."

Her Star Style Forecast

Carrie's hot summer tour has her opening for several artists besides Chesney, including Keith Urban, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson and more. If you score a ticket to see her, you might see Carrie play guitar or piano (or even yodel) onstage, but her signature style is to let her pipes do the work for her. What you won't see? Super-flashy outfits reminiscent of her talent show past. "I like jeans and T-shirts for shows, especially outdoor shows because it's comfortable," says Carrie. "And I think I can relate to the audience and focus on my music a lot more when I'm comfortable."

Carrie's style hasn't changed since America first met her. Her fans call themselves the "Care Bears" and often toss stuffed bears onstage while she's performing. Care Bears also fill online boards with messages about her laid-back look. "I think it's OK that girls are going for my style now. You'll still find me at the mall shopping at the places where I always shopped," she insists.

Carrie believes the country music world is wide open when it comes to style. You can be a rhinestone cowgirl or a casual Abercrombie/Skechers babe, like her. "The reason I wanted to sing country is because I wouldn't have to change. I don't have to dress a certain way, act a certain way. It's just about me being myself, and people like that."

And on Idol? Was there pressure to conform and dress more pop? "We were given a budget to shop, but it wasn't much, especially for L.A.," she says. "I was saving every penny I could from any money I got from the show. I thought, 'I'll put this away, and I can go finish college after it's over,' because I never expected to win. My thoughts were, 'There's no way I'm going to drop 800 bucks on a dress.' That's silly."

Other contestants weren't so thrifty. "There were a couple times when I went shopping with other girls, and we had different ideas about shopping," she says, pointing upward as if to punctuate her statement with a trash-talk alerting Ahem! "I was with Lindsey Cardinale, and we were going to American Eagle Outfitters--stuff we were used to, stuff we could afford. And one girl was just like, 'I can't shop there,' and we were like, 'Well, go away then!' You know, when people are being like that? I'm thinking, 'I need my money for tuition. I'm going to Abercrombie.'"

Each season, Idol contestants are responsible for their own hair, makeup and outfits up until the top 12, at which point the show provides wardrobe and professional styling. "They want to show our progress, how we go from everyday people to stars," says Carrie. While on Idol, people often talked about how she looked "chunky." In person, she is actually petite and lean, despite a deep love for chocolate (Hershey's is her newest endorsement deal). If you were being criticized and insulted, would you read that jive? "For the record, I do not chat online. I don't blog. I am not on MySpace. If someone is saying she's me, she absolutely is not."

Carrie definitely does not have time for the virtual reality of the Internet. She is about to graduate from college and, sometime in between studying and superstardom, she has to squeeze in time for her boyfriend, a guy she knew for a couple years before they finally got together. When she's not working her tail off, she's sitting on it at home in her favorite NSU sweats and watching scary movies and reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation (her favorite show) in her new two-story house near Nashville. Is there anything not ideal about this idol?

Fears and Fates

"I always complained about stars who would gripe about fans, and now I kind of understand it," she says. "Like 99 percent of fans are great, loyal, normal, wonderful fans. Then there's that one fan that just crosses the line, like ridiculously crosses the line. My grandmother recently passed away, and there was a person who came to the cemetery to take pictures of me visiting my grandmother at her grave. I hid at first, and then my brother-in-law said, 'Do you want me to go talk to him?' So he went over to the guy, and the guy was like, 'Oh I'm sorry, I got six girls at home and ...' It was awful."

For the record, Carrie's random freaky fans are not spearheading weird and inappropriate celebrity-worshipping behavior, such as lurking behind trees and cars with a camera or asking for autographs while she's in a stall at a restaurant restroom. Still ... "It's those kind of things that happen where I'm just like, 'What are you thinking?' I would never do such a thing!"

And she's not just saying that. Carrie claims to be shy, unable to feel at ease at a party or shop at malls during Christmas because of the crowds. "If I'm one on one with someone and they make me feel comfortable, like now, then I'm fine. But if I'm in a large situation where there's a lot of people around, I'll get extremely anxious and I'll start like, playing with my hands, and I can't breathe very well."

Hello? She has sang onstage in front of millions of viewers. "That's different, that's performing," she says. "And I've had to get used to certain situations. But I handled it. All girls can. If you're shy, stick yourself out there. Just take a deep breath and say, 'You know what? I gotta get over this.'" A publicist pokes her head into the room and reminds us of the time. Carrie fiddles with her purse-a polite hint that she's done talking about herself. We ask her if she has anything more to say to GL readers. It's an easy question for her to answer.

"There's a lot more pressure for girls to figure out what they are going to do with their lives," she says, earnest. "But to plan your life out in front of you when you're that young doesn't mean it's going to go that way. You might be destined for something else. I look at it this way: Whether you let your life go to fate or luck or God or whatever you believe in, it's important to step back every once in a while and remember that if you work hard and something is right for you, doors will open."

If you want to find out Carrie's tour dates, see her videos or read more news, views and polls, go to carrieunderwoodofficial.com You could also do a "Carrie Underwood" Google search and find thousands of websites devoted to this idol. Hey, call it good fortune smiling down on you.