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Beneath the cowboy hat and chart-topping hits lies a life filled with passion, heartbreak, and surprises. From humble beginnings to commanding stadium stages, Toby Keith’s journey is far more complex than meets the eye. What secret promise drove his music? How did his family shape his fierce independence? These 13 stunning truths reveal the man behind the legend—and you won’t believe

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Introduction

Toby Keith’s name, age and hit country songs are well-known to fans and even non-fans. This list of facts about the singer digs deeper.

On Monday (Feb. 5), 62-year-old Toby Keith Covel died after a two-year battle with stomach cancer. For 31 years he was a country radio mainstay and one of the rare talents capable of filling venues of any size. Wife Tricia and children Shelley, Krystal and Stelen are surely in mourning.

The news was revealed on social media, and while everyone knew it was possible, it was no less shocking. This week will be dedicated to a look back at Keith’s life and career. He was a hell-raiser with a soft pen. He was a proud American, but a prouder father.

Here are 13 facts about the Oklahoma native, including what friends and family thought of his marriage to Tricia and a stunning career snub that looks like it will never be made right.

Here are 13 facts about the Oklahoma native, including what friends and family thought of his marriage to Tricia and a stunning career snub that looks like it will never be made right.

13 Toby Keith Facts You Probably Never Knew

Toby Keith lived a fascinating life, but even fans who thought they knew everything about this country music hero will learn a thing or two on this list of 13 Toby Keith facts.

1.Toby Keith’s Adopted His Oldest Daughter

Toby Keith’s wife Tricia already had a little girl when they got married in 1984, so he adopted her. One has to search to find this information, as he’s never referred to 44-year-old Shelley Rowland as anything other than one of his own.

2.They Said Toby Keith Should Get a Real Job

When Toby Keith married Tricia Covel in 1984, there were doubters. Many thought the singer needed to get a straight job instead of chasing a wild country music dream. She believed in him, however, and within a decade it’d pay off.

3.Toby Keith Wrote a Song for His 2-Year-Old Son

A forgotten deep cut in Toby Keith’s catalog is the song he wrote for his new son, Stelen. In 1999 he released “Heart to Heart (Stelen’s Song),” a remarkably tender ballad.
Find the hitmaker telling of the little boy’s misbehavior as he smiles, recognizing the similarities. “Just like me / We keep her on her toes a lot,” he sings during the pre-chorus. It’s very sweet.

4.Toby Keith Was a Professional Football Player

Before chasing country music, while he worked in the oil field, Toby Keith played football for a semi-pro team called the Oklahoma Drillers. That picture was from before that, but we hear he was quite good.

5.Toby Keith Started at a Hot Dog Stand

We’ll admit the source for this next Toby Keith fact is weak, but the story goes that one of the first places he played upon moving to Nashville was a Music Row hot dog stand named Houndogs. It was near where the Musica statue is today, and it’s confirmed to have been a launching point for several stars.

6.Toby Keith’s Band Is the Easy Money Band

Toby Keith named his band the Easy Money Band after scoring a wedding gig many years ago. He got a check for $1,000 and said it was “easy money.” The name stuck.

7.He Had the Most-Played Country Song of the 1990s

Toby Keith’s debut single “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” was the most-played country song of the 1990s. It was a No. 1 hit and certified triple-Platinum.

8.Toby Keith Recorded Very Few Duets

We count five collaborations across Toby Keith’s 19 studio albums. They are:
  • I”m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying” with Sting
  • “Beer for My Horses” with Willie Nelson
  • “Mockingbird” with Krystal Keith
  • “She Ain’t Hooked on Me No More” with Merle Haggard
  • “Sailboat for Sale” with Jimmy Buffett
He did collaborate with other artists on their projects (most recently with Brantley Gilbert on “The Worst Country Song of All Time”), but for the most part, he remained a solo artist. Aside from his daughter, he never recorded a song with a female vocalist for one of his records.

9.Toby Keith and Willie Nelson Played the Super Bowl

No, the two “Beer for My Horses” singers did not play the halftime show, but in 2004, Willie Nelson and Toby Keith were trusted with a pre-game concert in Houston.
The New England Patriots would defeat the Carolina Panthers that year, but the day is probably best remembered for the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake wardrobe malfunction.

10.Toby Keith Was an Accomplished Actor

Nobody will claim Toby Keith was robbed of an Oscar, but he built a short movie resume in 2008 with films like Beer for My Horses, based on his song of the same name.
Prior to that, he starred in Broken Bridges with Kelly Preston. The cast of each was remarkably deep.

11.Toby Keith Was the $500 Million Dollar Man

In summer 2013, Forbes profiled 100 celebrities and put Toby Keith on the cover, calling him the $500 million man. The article was focused on his many business ventures, but he’d later admit he hated it. His publicist made him do it, he said.
“I play golf with my shirttail out,” Keith said.

12.Toby Keith on Politics? It’s Complicated

Toby Keith has voted Republican and he’s voted Democrat. He’s supported Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. He’s said nice things about Bill Clinton and performed at Donald Trump’s inauguration.
On the record, Keith has admitted to once being a conservative Democrat who became disenfranchised with the party, so he went independent. There’s a want to tie his patriotism to conservatism, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s hard to say that politics were top of mind for Keith.

 13 .Toby Keith Never Won a Grammy

Toby Keith earned seven Grammy nominations in his career, but never won. His most recent was for Male Country Vocal Performance for his ballad “Cryin’ for Me.”

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GLEN CAMPBELL HEARD “RHINESTONE COWBOY” ON THE RADIO AND DECIDED HE HAD TO RECORD IT. WHEN HE WALKED INTO CAPITOL RECORDS TO ASK ABOUT THE SONG, AN EXECUTIVE WAS ALREADY WAITING TO PLAY HIM THE VERY SAME RECORD. By 1974, Campbell knew what it felt like when the lights moved somewhere else. He had already lived through “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” television stardom and years as one of America’s most recognizable crossover singers. But the huge records had slowed, and his personal life was becoming increasingly unsettled. “Rhinestone Cowboy” reached him at exactly the kind of moment its story described: a veteran still trying to find the lights again. The song belonged to **Larry Weiss**. Weiss had written and recorded it himself for his 1974 album *Black and Blue Suite*. His version failed to become a significant U.S. hit. Campbell heard it on Los Angeles radio, remembered the title even though he could not remember the singer’s name, and became so taken with it that he learned the song while touring Australia. Then came the coincidence. Back in Los Angeles, Campbell walked into Capitol executive Al Coury’s office intending to pursue the song. Coury told him he had something Campbell needed to hear. He put on **“Rhinestone Cowboy.”** There was little left to debate. Campbell recorded it in early 1975 with producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. Before Capitol had even fully launched the single, Campbell performed it on a telethon. Los Angeles programmer Paul Drew saw the performance, obtained an acetate and began playing it across the RKO radio chain, helping force the label into an accelerated release. The result was bigger than a country comeback. “Rhinestone Cowboy” reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the country chart, giving Campbell his **first solo Hot 100 No. 1** after more than a decade of hits. For one week in September 1975, it topped both charts simultaneously — something no song had done since Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” in 1961. But Campbell was not the only career altered by the record. Larry Weiss had become so discouraged after his own album failed that he was considering leaving music and going into the furniture business. Then word arrived that Glen Campbell was cutting his song. So “Rhinestone Cowboy” ended up carrying two men at once. One was a star trying to find his way back toward the center of American radio. The other was a songwriter getting ready to walk away from music entirely. The same three-minute song gave both of them a reason not to disappear.

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BRAD PAISLEY WAS EIGHT WHEN HIS GRANDFATHER GAVE HIM HIS FIRST GUITAR. BY 13, HE WAS A REGULAR ON JAMBOREE USA. A WEEK AFTER COLLEGE GRADUATION, NASHVILLE WAS ALREADY PAYING HIM TO WRITE SONGS. Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale, West Virginia, watching his maternal grandfather Warren Jarvis play the country guitar music he loved. On Christmas Day in 1980, when Brad was eight, Jarvis gave him a Sears Danelectro Silvertone guitar. With lessons and encouragement, Paisley progressed quickly. By ten he was performing, and at 13 he wrote his first song and began appearing regularly on WWVA’s **Jamboree USA** in Wheeling. That was more than a childhood novelty. Paisley would spend roughly eight years performing through the Jamboree world, getting comfortable in front of real country audiences while still in school. As a teenager, he also opened shows for established artists including Roy Clark, Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with other major country names who passed through the region. After high school and two years at West Liberty State College, Paisley received a fully funded ASCAP scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, where he studied music business. Belmont put him inside the machinery he had been watching from a distance. During an internship, people around Paisley discovered that he was writing songs himself. Once they heard the material, they began helping him make the right introductions. Paisley later said that by graduation, it felt as though much of the path had already been laid out. The timing proved it. Just **one week after graduating from Belmont**, Paisley signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing. Before he had a record contract of his own, other singers began cutting his songs. David Kersh recorded “Another You,” which became a Top 5 country hit and gave the newly graduated Paisley his first significant royalties as a professional songwriter. Cuts by David Ball and Tracy Byrd followed before Arista Nashville eventually signed Paisley as a recording artist. His debut album, *Who Needs Pictures*, arrived in 1999 and produced the No. 1 hits “He Didn’t Have to Be” and “We Danced.” But Nashville’s first serious vote of confidence had come several years earlier. Before the record deal, the videos or the No. 1 singles, somebody in Music Row had already decided that Brad Paisley’s songs were worth buying. And only a week earlier, he had still been a college student.

Country Music

SAMMY KERSHAW HAD BEEN PLAYING MUSIC SINCE HE WAS 12. BY 1988, DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND YEARS OF CLUB WORK HAD WORN HIM DOWN SO BADLY THAT HE QUIT MUSIC AND TOOK A FULL-TIME JOB REMODELING WALMART STORES. THREE YEARS LATER, HIS FIRST MAJOR-LABEL SINGLE REACHED THE COUNTRY TOP 3. Raised in Kaplan, Louisiana, he began performing as a child and was opening shows for established country acts while still a teenager. But nearly two decades of bars, road work and unstable income took their toll. Kershaw later described years marked by failed marriages, drugs and alcohol, while supporting himself through jobs ranging from carpentry and welding to radio work. By 1988, he was finished. Trying to save his marriage and get his life under control, Kershaw quit drinking, quit drugs — and quit the music business with them. He took a full-time job supervising store remodeling for Walmart. In another interview, he remembered simply being tired of the business and deciding that chasing the dream was no longer practical. For a while, country music became the thing he used to do. Then songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded him to make another demo. That tape helped bring Kershaw to Mercury Records, which heard in his voice the traditional Louisiana-country sound that immediately drew comparisons to George Jones. Mercury signed him, and in 1991 released **“Cadillac Style.”** The single climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart. His debut album, *Don’t Go Near the Water*, followed and eventually went platinum. Two years later, Kershaw scored his first No. 1 with **“She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”** By then, the man who had once decided music could no longer support a real life had become one of the recognizable traditional voices of the 1990s country boom. The strangest part was how little time separated those two lives. In the late 1980s, Sammy Kershaw was remodeling stores because he believed the sensible part of his music career was over. By the middle of the next decade, he had gone from that Walmart job to platinum records — without changing the George Jones-inspired country voice that Nashville had ignored for years.

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GLEN CAMPBELL HEARD “RHINESTONE COWBOY” ON THE RADIO AND DECIDED HE HAD TO RECORD IT. WHEN HE WALKED INTO CAPITOL RECORDS TO ASK ABOUT THE SONG, AN EXECUTIVE WAS ALREADY WAITING TO PLAY HIM THE VERY SAME RECORD. By 1974, Campbell knew what it felt like when the lights moved somewhere else. He had already lived through “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” television stardom and years as one of America’s most recognizable crossover singers. But the huge records had slowed, and his personal life was becoming increasingly unsettled. “Rhinestone Cowboy” reached him at exactly the kind of moment its story described: a veteran still trying to find the lights again. The song belonged to **Larry Weiss**. Weiss had written and recorded it himself for his 1974 album *Black and Blue Suite*. His version failed to become a significant U.S. hit. Campbell heard it on Los Angeles radio, remembered the title even though he could not remember the singer’s name, and became so taken with it that he learned the song while touring Australia. Then came the coincidence. Back in Los Angeles, Campbell walked into Capitol executive Al Coury’s office intending to pursue the song. Coury told him he had something Campbell needed to hear. He put on **“Rhinestone Cowboy.”** There was little left to debate. Campbell recorded it in early 1975 with producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. Before Capitol had even fully launched the single, Campbell performed it on a telethon. Los Angeles programmer Paul Drew saw the performance, obtained an acetate and began playing it across the RKO radio chain, helping force the label into an accelerated release. The result was bigger than a country comeback. “Rhinestone Cowboy” reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the country chart, giving Campbell his **first solo Hot 100 No. 1** after more than a decade of hits. For one week in September 1975, it topped both charts simultaneously — something no song had done since Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” in 1961. But Campbell was not the only career altered by the record. Larry Weiss had become so discouraged after his own album failed that he was considering leaving music and going into the furniture business. Then word arrived that Glen Campbell was cutting his song. So “Rhinestone Cowboy” ended up carrying two men at once. One was a star trying to find his way back toward the center of American radio. The other was a songwriter getting ready to walk away from music entirely. The same three-minute song gave both of them a reason not to disappear.

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FLEETWOOD MAC CUT STEVIE NICKS’ BREAKUP SONG FROM RUMOURS — THEN STUCK IT ON THE B-SIDE OF LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM’S BREAKUP SONG ABOUT HER. TWENTY YEARS LATER, SHE SANG IT TO HIS FACE ONSTAGE. The timing made the rejection sting even more. Nicks and Buckingham had been together for years before joining Fleetwood Mac, surviving lean days as a duo before the band suddenly made them famous. By the time *Rumours* was being made in 1976, their relationship was coming apart while they were still expected to write, record and perform beside one another. Nicks turned that fracture into “Silver Springs.” The title came from seeing a sign for Silver Spring, Maryland, while traveling. She liked the name and began imagining it as a place that represented what her relationship with Buckingham might have become. She expected the song to be on *Rumours*. It wasn’t. The album was already pushing the limits of vinyl running time, and “Silver Springs” was judged too long. The band substituted the shorter Nicks song “I Don’t Want to Know.” Producer Ken Caillat later confirmed that the physical limitations of the LP were part of the reason it was left behind. For Nicks, it felt like losing one of the songs that mattered most to her. Then came the placement that made the whole episode almost cruelly symmetrical. “Silver Springs” was released as the B-side of **“Go Your Own Way”** — Buckingham’s own public account of their breakup. His song became one of Fleetwood Mac’s defining hits. Hers remained the record people had to turn over to hear. For years, that might have been the end of it. It wasn’t. When Fleetwood Mac reunited for *The Dance* in 1997, “Silver Springs” returned to the set. During the televised performance, Nicks eventually turned toward Buckingham and delivered the song directly at him while he played guitar and sang harmony. Twenty years had passed since she wrote it. The performance gave the discarded song a second life, and “Silver Springs” later received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. There was one more quiet consequence. Nicks had assigned the song’s royalties to her mother, Barbara, who called it her “rainy day song.” So the track that missed *Rumours*, disappeared into a B-side and spent two decades outside the album eventually became something else entirely: a source of income for her mother and, much later, one of the performances most closely associated with Stevie Nicks herself.

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BRAD PAISLEY WAS EIGHT WHEN HIS GRANDFATHER GAVE HIM HIS FIRST GUITAR. BY 13, HE WAS A REGULAR ON JAMBOREE USA. A WEEK AFTER COLLEGE GRADUATION, NASHVILLE WAS ALREADY PAYING HIM TO WRITE SONGS. Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale, West Virginia, watching his maternal grandfather Warren Jarvis play the country guitar music he loved. On Christmas Day in 1980, when Brad was eight, Jarvis gave him a Sears Danelectro Silvertone guitar. With lessons and encouragement, Paisley progressed quickly. By ten he was performing, and at 13 he wrote his first song and began appearing regularly on WWVA’s **Jamboree USA** in Wheeling. That was more than a childhood novelty. Paisley would spend roughly eight years performing through the Jamboree world, getting comfortable in front of real country audiences while still in school. As a teenager, he also opened shows for established artists including Roy Clark, Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with other major country names who passed through the region. After high school and two years at West Liberty State College, Paisley received a fully funded ASCAP scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, where he studied music business. Belmont put him inside the machinery he had been watching from a distance. During an internship, people around Paisley discovered that he was writing songs himself. Once they heard the material, they began helping him make the right introductions. Paisley later said that by graduation, it felt as though much of the path had already been laid out. The timing proved it. Just **one week after graduating from Belmont**, Paisley signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing. Before he had a record contract of his own, other singers began cutting his songs. David Kersh recorded “Another You,” which became a Top 5 country hit and gave the newly graduated Paisley his first significant royalties as a professional songwriter. Cuts by David Ball and Tracy Byrd followed before Arista Nashville eventually signed Paisley as a recording artist. His debut album, *Who Needs Pictures*, arrived in 1999 and produced the No. 1 hits “He Didn’t Have to Be” and “We Danced.” But Nashville’s first serious vote of confidence had come several years earlier. Before the record deal, the videos or the No. 1 singles, somebody in Music Row had already decided that Brad Paisley’s songs were worth buying. And only a week earlier, he had still been a college student.

Country Music

SAMMY KERSHAW HAD BEEN PLAYING MUSIC SINCE HE WAS 12. BY 1988, DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND YEARS OF CLUB WORK HAD WORN HIM DOWN SO BADLY THAT HE QUIT MUSIC AND TOOK A FULL-TIME JOB REMODELING WALMART STORES. THREE YEARS LATER, HIS FIRST MAJOR-LABEL SINGLE REACHED THE COUNTRY TOP 3. Raised in Kaplan, Louisiana, he began performing as a child and was opening shows for established country acts while still a teenager. But nearly two decades of bars, road work and unstable income took their toll. Kershaw later described years marked by failed marriages, drugs and alcohol, while supporting himself through jobs ranging from carpentry and welding to radio work. By 1988, he was finished. Trying to save his marriage and get his life under control, Kershaw quit drinking, quit drugs — and quit the music business with them. He took a full-time job supervising store remodeling for Walmart. In another interview, he remembered simply being tired of the business and deciding that chasing the dream was no longer practical. For a while, country music became the thing he used to do. Then songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded him to make another demo. That tape helped bring Kershaw to Mercury Records, which heard in his voice the traditional Louisiana-country sound that immediately drew comparisons to George Jones. Mercury signed him, and in 1991 released **“Cadillac Style.”** The single climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart. His debut album, *Don’t Go Near the Water*, followed and eventually went platinum. Two years later, Kershaw scored his first No. 1 with **“She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”** By then, the man who had once decided music could no longer support a real life had become one of the recognizable traditional voices of the 1990s country boom. The strangest part was how little time separated those two lives. In the late 1980s, Sammy Kershaw was remodeling stores because he believed the sensible part of his music career was over. By the middle of the next decade, he had gone from that Walmart job to platinum records — without changing the George Jones-inspired country voice that Nashville had ignored for years.