Tim McGraw has Faith Hill to thank for life as he knows it.
The “Shotgun Rider” singer told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe Thursday that he “would’ve died already” or “run [his] career into the ground” if he had not married his fellow country star in 1996 at age 29.
McGraw, now 56, added that Hill, 55, “put up with” his “wild years” early in their union.
“I was pretty sneaky about it for a while. But it was just overdoing stuff,” the Grammy winner recalled.
“Then I think when the kids got old enough that they could notice things, [that’s] when she finally said, ‘You’ve got to figure this out,'” he continued of his “brutal” and “honest” partner.
McGraw, who is the father of daughters Gracie, 26, Maggie, 25, and Audrey, 21, has been sober for 15 years.
In an August 2021 essay for Esquire, the songwriter described the day he turned to Hill for help with his alcoholism.
“I remember a moment when I was getting out of bed and going to the liquor cabinet and taking a big shot at 8:00 in the morning and thinking, ‘I have to wake the kids up,'” he wrote at the time. “I went straight to my wife and said, ‘This is where I’m at.’ I was scared.”
In response, Hill “just grabbed [him] and hugged” him in an interaction that “changed [his] life.”
McGraw, who got sober in 2008, called the “This Kiss” singer his “rock” in a Yahoo Entertainment interview earlier this month.
“I don’t think I could stand up straight without leaning on her in everything that I do,” the actor gushed, adding that abstaining from alcohol has not been a “linear path” for him.
“There are setbacks and there are times you move forward and do great, and there are times you set back,” he explained. “And that’ll probably [be] a process throughout the rest of my life and something that I have to be diligent about and really continue to work at.”
