Toby Keith died on February 5, 2024, at 62, after a battle with stomach cancer. Just three days earlier, voting had closed for the Country Music Hall of Fame Class of 2024. He had been elected, and he never heard the news. Eight months later, his wife Tricia Covel stood on a Nashville stage and told him anyway, with a line that sent longtime fans straight back to 1993 and his very first single, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.”
The Medallion Ceremony took place on Sunday, October 20, 2024, inside the CMA Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It is an invitation-only night, and that year it welcomed three new members: John Anderson, James Burton, and Toby Keith. Two of them could walk up and take their medallions. One could not.
The Songs Came First
Before anyone spoke for Toby Keith, his friends sang for him.
Post Malone went first. He had once jammed with Toby on his tour bus back in 2016, with members of SEAL Team Six sitting in. He had headlined Nissan Stadium the night before the ceremony, and now he played “I’m Just Talkin’ About Tonight,” Toby’s No. 1 hit from 2001. “We love you, Toby,” he told the room.
Eric Church came next, alone with an acoustic guitar. He had said he “wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Toby Keith.” His song was “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” the late-career ballad Toby kept singing as he fought his illness.
“I wish Toby were here to sing it, but I’ll do my best.” — Eric Church
Church later said of the song, “It was so representative of where he was in his life that it was striking.”
Blake Shelton, a fellow Oklahoman, closed the tributes the way Toby might have wanted. He strapped on a patriotic flag guitar like the one Toby carried on stage and tore into a medley of “I Love This Bar” and “Red Solo Cup,” asking the whole room to sing along.
“A Man That I Dearly Loved”
Toby Keith had always loved Alabama, so it fit that the band’s frontman, Randy Owen, was chosen to present his medallion. Owen called him “a man that I dearly loved.”
“He loved his country. He loved his family. He proved that, over and over again.” — Randy Owen
Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young summed up Toby the same way: for him, it was simple. It was about love of country and having the back of those who protect us.
The First Time She Spoke
Then Owen handed the medallion to Tricia Covel. She and Toby had been married for nearly four decades, and their son Stelen stood beside her on stage. It was the first time she had spoken publicly since his death, and she said so.
“It’s pretty emotional for me tonight, and this is actually the first time I’ve been able to talk.”
She had to pause more than once to get through it. “I wish Toby was here to be able to do it,” she said. “It was something he was always looking forward to.”
She reminded the room that Toby saw himself as a songwriter first, and that writing was his passion. And she put his whole career into a single sentence: “He didn’t just sing those songs. He was those songs.”
“There’ll never be another Toby Keith,” she said.
“I Should Have Been”
Near the end, Tricia came to the news he never got to hear.
“He didn’t get the chance to hear the news that he had been inducted. I have a feeling, in his words, he might have thought, ‘I should have been.’ Toby, we know you know. You are in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
“In his words” mattered. For anyone who had followed Toby Keith since the beginning, “I should have been” carried the sound of “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” the 1993 debut single that went to No. 1 and introduced a former Oklahoma oil field worker to the whole country. Thirty-one years later, the line came back to him one more time, with a little of that famous Toby swagger: of course he belonged there.
Member No. 155
With that medallion, Toby Keith, John Anderson, and James Burton became the 153rd, 154th, and 155th members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Tanya Tucker closed the night by leading “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” as the ceremony always ends.
Toby never got the phone call. But on that Sunday night in Nashville, the people who loved him made sure the message got delivered.
Which Toby Keith song still takes you right back to where you were when you first heard it?