Toby Keith’s Wife Breaks Silence for the First Time Since His Passing

Tricia Covel and Toby Keith shared nearly 40 years of marriage. They first met when she was a 19-year-old secretary, and he was 20, playing music in local bars after long days working in Oklahoma’s oil fields. The couple married in 1984 and remained together until Toby’s passing from cancer in February 2024.

After Toby Keith’s passing, his children—Stelen, Krystal, and Shelley—shared heartfelt tributes to their father on social media and at various events honoring him. However, Toby’s wife, Tricia, remained silent until his recent induction into the **Country Music Hall of Fame**. According to the family, they learned just days after his death that Toby had been selected for the Hall of Fame, with voting having been completed before his passing. Toby never knew of this prestigious honor.

At Sunday’s official induction ceremony, Tricia spoke publicly for the first time since Toby’s death, as she accepted his Hall of Fame medallion from Randy Owen of Alabama. It marked not only her first public comments about her husband but also her first-ever public speech. In an emotional 16-minute address, she shared her thoughts with the somber audience gathered at the exclusive, invitation-only event at the Museum’s **CMA Theater**.

“I’m so grateful and so thankful to have spent the time, 43 years with him,” Tricia told the crowd. “Toby loved hard and he lived big. He enjoyed everything he did. He had no regrets through his life … He made you feel like he was your best friend when he talked with you. There are people all over the world that Toby meant something to. We get letters. People walk up to me randomly, they’ve never met me before, and they’ll walk up to me and shake my hand and say, ‘I miss him every day. I say, ‘Me too,’ then we’re both crying.”

Tricia also spoke about Toby’s insistence that he live in his home state of Oklahoma rather than give into the pressure to move to Nashville.

“There may be better singers, there may be better songwriters, but they’ll never outwork me,’” Tricia said her husband once said. “He had to work twice as hard. He didn’t fit into the normal, mainstream Nashville and politics and the business. Hard work, toughness and God-given talent. Toby didn’t have to be branded as authentic — he was the example of authentic.”

 

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She added that the family is “brokenhearted” that Toby couldn’t accept this honor in person, but they find peace knowing that his spirit is being kept alive through his music and the people who continue to play his songs.

For the first time, Toby Keith’s wife is talking about the late singer. Such a bittersweet moment for the family. pic.twitter.com/2bC6m20VKQ

— Taste of Country (@TasteOfCountry) October 23, 2024

“Thank you to the Country Music Hall of Fame Hall of Fame for honoring Toby with this induction. He didn’t get the chance to hear the news that he had been inducted, but I have a feeling Toby, we know you know you are in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”