Tim McGraw doesn’t know where he would be without his wife, Faith Hill. The 58-year-old is opening up about their relationship, and where he thinks he would be if he had never met Hill.
“I’ve been lucky,” McGraw tells Tracy Lawrence on his Road House podcast (via People). “I’ve been very fortunate. First off, meeting my wife saved my life. I was a wild man. I was having fun.”
“She turned my life around,” he continues. “I couldn’t have found a better woman. Not only beautiful and talented, but just a good, good person. And then having our daughters. It’s life-changing. They make you a better person, and they certainly calm the demons in you.”
Becoming a father to his three daughters, now grown, was one of the most pivotal moments of McGraw’s life.
“[It] changed everything about my life,” the Louisiana native says. “It changed my perspective. It changed the way I thought about what my future would be. It certainly took me out of myself,”
If becoming a father was the most important occasion in his life, touring with Hill, on their Soul2Soul Tours, was his biggest highlight.
“My tours with Faith,” he says of the highest point of his professional life.
“The Soul2Soul tours with Faith, for a couple of reasons,” he explains. “Because it’s rare that people get to do that in this business, that a husband and wife get to go on tour at the pinnacle of their careers and get to do stuff together,”
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While Hill has mostly retired from performing, she remains her husband’s favorite voice, and loudest muse.
“She just really has such a soulful voice, and her musical taste is just so incredible,” McGraw boasts.
It was Hill who encouraged McGraw to quit drinking in 2008. 17 years later, he still looks to her for inspiration and guidance.
“She makes me a better artist every time I have to sing with her,” he says. “Because to me, I think Faith, when you listen to her music and you listen to her albums, I think she is probably one of the best singers in the world.”
McGraw recently shared his thoughts on what makes his marriage to Hill, whom he wed in 1996, so successful.
“I am not an expert,” McGraw tells his record label. “I don’t think anybody is. Marriage is — any relationship’s tough if you don’t cultivate it, and certainly if you’re not committed to it. Love and respect are always important, but I think that knowing that there’s gonna be tough times and knowing there’s gonna be times where you don’t like each other as much, all those things are gonna happen.
“I think that it’s knowing those things are gonna be there,” he adds. “Still knowing that you’re gonna get through the other side of it and you want to be together, and this is what you want your life to look like, I think is the important thing.”
When McGraw was given the ACM Icon Award, he credited Hill with how transformative she was in his life.
“My world changed the day I met Faith Hill … You’re my partner in life, you’re my partner musically,” McGraw said, his voice heavy with emotion. “And how blessed I am. I would not be where I am today, without you and your grace. I love you unconditionally.”
McGraw just released “Paper Umbrellas” with Parker McCollum. Fortunately, Hill loved the song.
“Oh, she loved it, so I got her stamp of approval,” McGraw says. “That’s probably more important than anything else in my life, is to get her stamp of approval on something, because if there’s anybody’s ears I trust, it’s hers. But, you know, we don’t always agree, either, so that’s always a good thing, too. ‘Cause she’ll check me on stuff that I think’s great, and she’ll go, ‘Eh, that’s pretty average.'”
Find “Paper Umbrellas” and all of McGraw’s music and upcoming shows at TimMcGraw.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the ACM