Toby Keith
#
37
Ranking
Hall of Famer
BIRTHDATE
BIRTHPLACE
Clinton
,
OK
,
USA
62
6
'
3
"
DIED
Toby Keith (born July 8, 1961, passed 2024) was a Clinton, Oklahoma-born country legend who went from working oil fields and grinding honky-tonk circuits with the Easy Money Band to selling over 40 million albums, scoring 32 number-one singles, writing one of the most downloaded country songs in history in "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," founding the OK Kids Korral pediatric cancer lodge he called his greatest accomplishment, and receiving a posthumous Country Music Hall of Fame induction just three days after his death on February 5, 2024, at age 62.
Current Tour & Setlist
Keith returned to the stage in 2023 after undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for stomach cancer diagnosed in late 2021, and delivered a breathtaking final televised performance at the People's Choice Country Awards singing "Don't Let the Old Man In," a song he had written years earlier for a Clint Eastwood film that took on devastating new meaning as he performed it. He passed away on February 5, 2024, at age 62 in Oklahoma, and just three days before his death the voting concluded for the Country Music Hall of Fame's 2024 inductees, with Keith elected in the Modern Era Artist category in what stands as one of the most poignant posthumous honors in the genre's history. His legacy lives on through the OK Kids Korral, through daughter Krystal Keith's ongoing music career, and through a catalog of hits that made him one of the defining voices of American country music for three decades.
Early Life
Born Toby Keith Covel on July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Oklahoma, to an oil rig derrick hand father and a mother who had dreamed of singing professionally, he grew up in Moore, Oklahoma, spending his most formative musical summers at his grandmother Hilda's supper club in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he would sneak away from kitchen duties to hear the house band play Ray Price and Bob Wills standards, and where his grandmother eventually bought him a guitar for his eighth birthday and let him climb onstage to play for her customers for the first time. Back in Moore, his elementary school creative writing teacher recognized and nurtured an extraordinary storytelling gift, encouraging Keith to keep writing and setting in motion the songwriting instincts that would eventually produce some of the most-played country lyrics of his generation.
Career Highlights
After graduating from Moore High School, Keith worked in the Oklahoma oil fields with his father and played semiprofessional football for the Oklahoma City Drillers before forming the Easy Money Band in the mid-1980s and grinding a 51-week-a-year circuit across Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, and Kansas for nearly a decade. His break came when a flight attendant fan passed one of his demo tapes to Mercury Records producer Harold Shedd, who flew to Oklahoma to see him perform and immediately offered a contract, leading to his 1993 debut album and the self-written number-one single "Should've Been a Cowboy," which became the most-played country song of the entire 1990s. Over a three-decade career he sold more than 40 million albums, scored 32 number-one singles, won two ACM Entertainer of the Year awards, founded Show Dog Nashville, purchased an early stake in Big Machine Records that helped launch Taylor Swift's career, and wrote "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" in 20 minutes following the September 11 attacks, a song that became one of the most discussed and downloaded country songs in history.
Family & Personal Life
Keith met his future wife Tricia Lucas at one of his Easy Money Band shows in 1980, married her, adopted her daughter Shelley, and together had two more children: daughter Krystal (born 1985), who became a country singer herself and recorded a duet with her father, and son Stelen (born 1997). Outside music, Keith was a devoted philanthropist who founded the Toby Keith Foundation in 2006 to build the OK Kids Korral, a full-service lodge for pediatric cancer patients and their families in Oklahoma City that has since raised over $15 million, which he called his greatest accomplishment, and who completed five USO tours performing for U.S. troops stationed abroad.
