It was an emotional night at Nashville’s CMA Theater on Sunday when Tim McGraw was inducted into the Country Hall Of Fame.
McGraw was there with his wife, fellow country superstar Faith Hill, and his three daughters, and yes, tears came when he was invited up to speak: “I’m going to cry because I cry all the time,” he said. “There’s a lot of oestrogen in my house.”
Addressing Hill, McGraw said that the only thing that would make the evening better would be if she were admitted too: “The only thing that can beat this night is when you’re standing here, and I’m sitting there” – and took time to speak about his daughters: “You’re the best thing we’ve ever made. Nothing in our careers even comes close.”
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The 59-year-old singer-songwriter also spoke about one of his heroes, Keith Whitley. He pointed out that Whitley had died at the absurdly young age of 34 in 1989 on exactly the same day (Tuesday, 9 May) that McGraw arrived in Nashville from his hometown of Start, Louisiana. One of his biggest hits was When You Say Nothing At All (which later became a significant hit for Ronan Keating), and the writer of that song was Paul Overstreet, who just happened to be one of McGraw’s fellow inductees on Sunday night.
“I don’t believe that’s coincidence,” McGraw said from the podium. “I believe that’s country music.”
Clearly in a reflective mood, he also talked about his difficult upbringing in Start. “I spent a lot of years wondering where I really came from,” he explained. “Turns out I had two dads.
“The one who raised me was my stepdad, Horace Smith. Now, he would have never won any awards for how he treated my mother or us kids.”
“And that house was a hard fire, but hard fire is how you make steel. When I was 11, I found my birth certificate in the name that I already knew from baseball. In fact, I had the card on my wall, McGraw. We met once that year, and I never saw him again until I was 19 years old.”
Aside from McGraw and Overstreet, the other inductees this year were the sibling duo, The Stanley Brothers. Sadly, they were not able to attend, having died in 1966 and 2016, respectively.
