Aaron Benward and Scott Reeves are living a Hollywood ending to their unbelievable beginning. The pop-country duo - barely a year into their career as Blue County - already have scored a Top 20 country single and an Academy of Country Music nomination for best duo on the strength of a little ditty about "Good Little Girls." They are quick to sound humble: "Everything that's happened to us this past year has far exceeded our expectations - it's just gone beyond what we ever expected," Benward offers in a phone conversation from his publicist's Los Angeles office. However, neither can mask his contagious enthusiasm. "Today our album's out! Woo-hoo!" Benward screams into a speaker phone, and Reeves lets loose an ear-splitting whistle behind him. "This is a dream come true," Benward, an established Christian-rock singer, gushes like a teenager just handed the keys to a sports car. "We met six years ago, and never did we think six years ago that six years later we would be doing this thing together." Benward and Reeves, a former soap star from "The Young & the Restless," met by chance at a video shoot and became fast friends. Oddly, they looked similar enough to be mistaken for brothers. Their friendship blossomed into a writing partnership several years back when the pair penned a screenplay about two brothers living in a fictional place called Blue County. When they decided to sing together in February 2003, they took the name and quickly blazed a trail in Nashville: record deal in record time; ditto the quick turnaround to release their first single and debut album. Then there's the Academy of Country Music nomination. It may or may not go down as a record for the quickest turnaround from unknown to nominee, but neither Benward nor Reeves seriously believes Blue County has a chance of unseating the reigning champions, Brooks and Dunn. "We need a miracle, baby," the Arkansas-born Reeves jokes. "Come on - pray for us." "Just the fact that we're nominated with these guys and we're in the same company as Brooks and Dunn, and Montgomery Gentry - we've won as far as we're concerned," says Benward, an Indiana native and longtime Nashville resident. "We're just looking forward to not sitting in the nosebleed section," Reeves adds. "We'll be sitting down front." A true Hollywood ending, of course, would have them winning the statuette.