Tim McGraw is a proud father of three daughters, all grown now. The 57-year-old, who shares his children with his wife, Faith Hill, is still learning how to be the best parent he can be, even though all of his girls live away from home. McGraw credits his ability to be a good father with his mother, Betty D’Agostino, who instilled a lot of life lessons that he still carries with him today.
“I think there’s a constant learning curve,” McGraw tells his record label. “I figured out pretty early that if you can get about 30 percent of it right, you’re doing pretty good. I had a great mom, and my mom sort of gave me my moral compass. She was a big influence on me and how I grew up, and the person that I am. I got a lot of faults, but I try my best to just teach my girls to be strong and independent and think for themselves, and have their own views and their own opinions, and be convicted with them.”
McGraw is the son of D’Agostino and Tug McGraw. The Louisiana native has been vocal about his love for his mother, who raised him largely as a single mother.
“My mom found out she was pregnant with me her senior in high school,’ McGraw previously recalled. “So, she had me young. 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 – me and my two sisters that all grew up together – how she dealt with all of that thing.”
Photo Credit: Tim McGraw/X
“But one thing that I really remember that’s plastered in my mind – and for her it was probably one of 100 times that I didn’t see – but I can remember us being on our own, my mom and my two sisters, and her working three jobs just to try to keep the basics in line,” he continued. “I mean, she made no money, really. But … I’m gonna get choked up, forgive me, but I can remember walking through the kitchen one night, getting up late – I don’t know how old I was, ten, 11, 12 years old, something like that – and she had her head down on the table at like two in the morning, with bills everywhere, and was crying.”
It was also D’Agsotino who gave McGraw the courage to quit college and pursue music full-time, an unlikely response that stunned him at the time.
“I was in college and I knew how bad she wanted me to go to college,” Tim said (via ABC Audio). “I was in pre-law and I was gonna go to law school and do all that stuff. I was a pretty good student coming out of high school, and I knew how bad she wanted me to do that. I remember calling her — and getting up the nerve to call her — to tell her that I was gonna quit college and move to Nashville.
“And it took me a while to do that,” he added “And when I told her, she just said, ‘I’m surprised you hadn’t done it already.’ And that was her way of just telling me, ‘Go do it.’ So, you know, she’s a big deal to me,”
McGraw currently has a Top 10 hit with “One Bad Habit.” The song is from his 2023 Poet’s Resumé EP. Find all of McGraw’s music and tour dates at TimMcGraw.com.