Tim McGraw says his sobriety journey wouldn’t have been possible without Faith Hill.
“I don’t think I could stand up straight without leaning on her in everything that I do,” McGraw, 56, told Yahoo Music during an interview on Tuesday, August 8.
McGraw admitted he faced challenges after coming to terms with his alcoholism.
“It is not a linear path. There’s setbacks and there’s times you move forward and do great, and there’s times you set back,” he continued. “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. And I think [my song ‘Hey Whiskey’] is helpful in that regard. It was very cathartic to me, in a lot of ways.”
McGraw, who exchanged vows with Hill, 55, in 1996, has previously opened up about hitting rock bottom with his drinking before turning to his wife for help.
“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,’” McGraw, who shares daughters Gracie, 26, Maggie, 24, and Audrey, 21, with Hill, told Esquire in 2021. “I went straight to my wife and said, ‘This is where I’m at.’ I was scared. She just grabbed me and hugged me and changed my life.”
McGraw also recalled how his outlook on love changed because of Hill, adding at the time, “My wife always says, ‘You’re not scared of anything.’ I say, ‘Ehhh, one thing. I’m looking at it right now.’ I didn’t know love could feel so good. Was it an emotion? Was it a lifestyle? Was it an imaginary thing? But love is all of those things.”
He continued: “Love is being angry. Love is not talking for a day. Love is getting in each other’s face. Love is accepting that I’m wrong. Love is a 360-degree thing. It’s not linear. They always say you’re not supposed to fight in front of your kids. Everybody fights in front of their kids. That’s part of the deal.”
During his interview on Tuesday, McGraw discussed how music brought him and Hill together.
“’It’s Your Love’ [is our song] because it was the very first song that Faith and I ever did together,” he added, referring to the couple’s duet from the Academy of Country Music Awards in 1997. “We were very early in our relationship, and it was just something that really just brought us together in a way that I don’t know what else could have. And then I remember shooting the video, and we shot it here in Los Angeles and Faith was pregnant with Gracie. That was just such a special time and a special moment, the beginning of a long relationship. I always look back on that as something that not only changed my musical world, but changed my life.”
