Krystal Keith’s dad, the great Toby Keith, might be one of the most famous country stars in history, but when she was growing up, she would have said he was just as ordinary as anyone else.
Krystal Keith used to tell people her dad has a regular 9-5 job.
In an exclusive chat with Fox News, Krystal Keith recalls how she used to keep her dad’s major stardom a secret while growing up. She didn’t think much of Toby’s fame at the time and only became more aware of it later in life when people started asking her questions about him. To maintain their privacy, she would create a new identity for her dad.
“I think I thought everybody’s dad had a job like my dad … he might as well have been a plumber,” Krystal said. “In fact, that’s what I told people he did. Later on in life, when people would find out who he was, and then they would come ask me a question, I knew they knew the answer; they’d be like, ‘What does your dad do for a living?’ I’d be like, ‘He’s a plumber.'”
“And they’d be like, ‘What’s his name?’ And it was always Mark,” she added.
And of course, most people were skeptical of her story, so, as an amusing backup plan, she would mention another country star’s name to throw people off.
“My second favorite thing was to say Garth Brooks, because they were already, like, they knew he was a singer,” she said. “They were expecting Toby Keith, and I’d be like, ‘My dad’s Garth Brooks!'”
“I never wanted to give them what they expected,” she noted.
Although it might have seemed fascinating and exciting to outsiders that her dad was a famous country singer, Krystal says that her childhood, along with her sister Shelley’s and brother Stelen’s, was very normal.
“We had an incredibly normal childhood, so it wasn’t like our lives changed drastically,” she said. “It was just, the things we were able to afford became a little bit different. My mom wasn’t stressing about, you know, where the light bill was getting paid. I mean, that was something we never knew anything about from the time we lived in a trailer.”
“We could have been rich then. I didn’t know the difference. We never wanted for anything … we always had everything we needed.”
In honor of Toby Keith’s legacy, Krystal Keith paid tribute to her late father with an emotional performance of “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”
On Wednesday, August 28, friends and family of Toby Keith gathered to honor his life during the American Icon tribute concert. Krystal Keith took the stage for a rare performance, singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” the same song her father performed during his final televised appearance shortly before his passing in February of this year.
Watch Krystal’s heartfelt tribute to Toby in the video below.