On April 20, 2024, Scotty McCreery stood in the center circle of the Grand Ole Opry House with his new Opry Member Award in his hands and looked out for one face in the crowd. It belonged to his son, Avery, who was 18 months old. Four and a half months earlier, that same little boy had taken his first steps backstage in the very same building.
The answer he gave every interviewer
Scotty was 17 when he won the tenth season of American Idol in 2011. From then on, whenever someone asked about his biggest goal, his answer did not change. He wanted to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
The idea went back further than television. Growing up in North Carolina, he heard his mother describe her own trip to the Opry in the 1970s, a night when “Whispering” Bill Anderson was on the bill. On Scotty’s induction night, Bill Anderson, then 86, performed just ahead of him.
Scotty’s first Opry visit came in June 2011, weeks after his Idol win, when Carrie Underwood introduced him and runner-up Lauren Alaina onstage. He returned days later to sing, with only one song of his own to his name. The harder years came after. At 22, dropped by his first label and trying to restart his career, he walked into the Opry circle in June 2016 with a song he had co-written about losing his grandfathers, “Five More Minutes.” It drew his first standing ovation on that stage. The song brought him a new label and became the first of his No. 1 singles.
The night the invitation came
On December 3, 2023, Scotty agreed to play the Opry’s Christmas show. He expected an early gig and told American Songwriter that he and his wife, Gabi, figured they would be in bed by 9:30.
The night was already special before he sang a note. Avery, born October 24, 2022, took his first steps backstage at the Opry House. Then Scotty went out to perform, and Garth Brooks walked out behind him. Brooks had flown back to Nashville from his Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace. He handed Scotty a wrapped box and told him the gift inside had not arrived yet. It was an invitation to join the Opry. Scotty bent down and touched the circle of wood at center stage.
Three Wooden Crosses and a surprise
On induction night, Scotty sang two songs from his upcoming album Rise and Fall, then Randy Travis’s “Three Wooden Crosses,” the song he had relied on as a 15-year-old amateur hoping for any kind of country career.
When he finished, Josh Turner came out to induct him. Scotty had auditioned for Idol with Turner’s “Your Man,” and Turner was the first name on his list when the Opry asked who should do the honors. Turner had given up a weekend off to be there. Walking beside him was Randy Travis, with his wife, Mary. Scotty knew Travis would be in the building, but not that he would come onstage. Travis has been unable to sing since a 2013 stroke, but his smile filled the moment.
Turner read a speech he had written. He talked about the unbroken circle of country music and said he was proud to have bridged the generation of Randy Travis and the generation of Scotty McCreery. When he reached the part about Scotty being a husband and now a father, his voice caught, and he had to pause before he could finish.
The speech he had not written
Scotty took the microphone and admitted he wished he had written a speech. He thanked Josh Turner and the people in the seats. Then he found Avery, who was in the audience with Gabi and the rest of the family.
Holding back tears, he said his son might not understand that night. But one day, he said, he would tell Avery that this had been his daddy’s dream and that it came true. And he would tell him to chase his own dreams too, because one day they could come true for him.
He told the crowd he would have to go home and write a new bucket list.
Five More Minutes, one more time
Scotty closed the night with “Five More Minutes,” the song that had changed his path in that same circle eight years earlier. When he reached the final verse, about a family gathered at a grandfather’s bedside, he stopped to say that both of his granddaddies would have loved to be there. He looked up and told them they had done it. He barely made it through the rest.
Afterward he screwed his brass nameplate onto the Opry’s member wall.
The picture he kept
When ABC Audio later asked what he remembered most, Scotty went back to a moment in the middle of a song. He glanced over his right shoulder and saw his wife, his family and Avery standing at the side of the stage with Randy Travis and Josh Turner.
“I was like, ‘What is life?'”
In the weeks that followed, he repeated the same plan in a backstage interview the Opry released: when Avery grows up, he will hear that his father chased a dream and caught it, and that his own can come true as well.
In 2025 the Opry put the boots and shoes worn by Scotty, Josh Turner and Randy Travis that night on display backstage, under the title of the George Jones song Turner had quoted, “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes.” That September, Scotty and Gabi welcomed a second son, Oliver.
Avery will not remember the night his father joined the Opry. He took his first steps in that building before he could know where he was. The rest of the story is the part his father has promised to tell him.