Country superstar Tim McGraw’s upbringing was anything but easy. His mom, Betty, got pregnant with him during her senior year of high school by then-minor league baseball player Tug McGraw, but the future MLB star was not involved in McGraw’s childhood, so it was just Betty, Tim and his two younger sisters.
In a 2020 interview, he told ABC News, “She didn’t get to graduate because I came along. And then she went through some terrible things early in my life. So I have a lot of memories of all those things, and I know how resilient my mom is, and how tough she is, and how strong of a woman she is, and how well she raised us under the circumstances.”
But now, in a new interview with his record label Big Machine, he said that his mom showed remarkable “tenacity” throughout his life, and he hopes to instill that same trait in his daughters.
“I think more than anything [what I admire most] is her tenacity. You know, my mom worked three jobs with us growing up, and was in some abusive relationships, and she really worked hard and really instilled a sense of belief in ourself and to dream and to always go for stuff,” said McGraw, adding, “And I feel like hopefully Faith and I both have done that for our daughters. But that’s the trait of my mom, besides her big heart, that’s the trait in my mom that I admire most, her tenacity and her willingness to overcome adversity.”
In the ABC News interview, McGraw recalled finding his mom crying over a table of bills when he and his two sisters were young, and it was just the four of them.
“I can remember us being on our own — my mom and my two sisters — and her working three jobs, probably, just to try to keep the basics. She made no money, really,” said McGraw, choking back tears.
He continued, “I can remember walking through the kitchen one night, getting up late, and … she had her head down on the table at like two in the morning with bills everywhere and was crying, and she didn’t see me. But for her, that was probably a hundred different nights that I didn’t know about.”
McGraw married fellow country singer Faith Hill in 1996. They have three daughters — Gracie, 28, Maggie, 26, and Audrey, 23.
