When Tim McGraw realized he needed help with his drinking, he knew where to turn.
In a new Esquire essay, the country crooner recalled the moment he admitted to his wife, Faith Hill, that he had a problem.
"I remember a moment when I was getting out of bed and going to the liquor cabinet and taking a big shot at 8 in the morning and thinking, I have to wake the kids up. I went straight to my wife and said, 'This is where I’m at,'" the 54-year-old wrote.
McGraw, who shares three children with Hill, described the way that moment made him feel and how his wife reacted in the best possible way.
"I was scared. She just grabbed me and hugged me and changed my life," he wrote.
"My wife always says, 'You’re not scared of anything,'" he added. "I say, 'Ehhh, one thing. I’m looking at it right now.'"
When McGraw released his book “Grit & Grace: Train the Mind, Train the Body, Own Your Life” in 2019 he also spoke out about his wife's role in helping him end his partying ways.
“Things happen and you succeed beyond your wildest dreams, and you’re playing all these great shows and the party’s going on,” he told TODAY’s Hoda Kotb at the time. “Then you’re married and you have kids, and all the sudden your wife looks at you and says, ‘You know, you’re getting a little overboard, and you need to make some decisions.’ It makes a big impact on you.”
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In his Esquire essay, McGraw also opened up about his late father, pro baseball star Tug McGraw, whom he didn't find out about until he saw the name on his birth certificate at 11 years old. Later that year, the father and son met, but they didn't reunite again until the latter was 18.
Even though Tug McGraw didn't play an active role in his son's early life, the "Something Like That" singer emphasized in his essay that he never felt any animosity towards him.
"People ask me, 'How could you have a relationship with your father? You were growing up in nothing. He was a millionaire baseball player. He knew you were there, and he didn’t do anything,'" he wrote. "But when I found out Tug McGraw was my dad, it gave me something in my little town in Louisiana, something that I would have never reached for. How could I ever be angry?"
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McGraw also spoke with Hoda about his dad in 2019, revealing that learning about his birth father instilled a sense of determination.
“I felt like when I found that out he’s a professional baseball player who’s successful, it made me think that blood is in my veins, so that ability is in there," he said. "I found that grit inside me that he must have had in order to succeed at what he did. It changed what I thought I could make out of my life.”