Toby Keith Net Worth
Toby Keith is a multi-hyphenate entertainer with a fortune estimated at $365 million. Toby has had a long and distinguished career as a country music performer. He’s also a successful entrepreneur, which makes him even more impressive.
Toby Keith Early Life
Clinton, Oklahoma was the location of Toby Keith Covel’s birth on July 8, 1961. Carolyn and Hubert Covel are parents to three children: one girl and two boys in addition to him. Even when he was a child, he spent his summers travelling to see his grandma. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she lived, she ran a supper club.
Toby was completely enthralled by the musicians who performed in the dinner club. He worked odd jobs around his grandmother’s club to earn money for his first guitar when he was 8 years old, and ultimately he was invited to perform on stage with the house band.
Moore, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas were Toby and his siblings’ places of residence during their formative years. On the football squad at Moore High School, he played the position of defensive end. After completing his high school education, he found employment in the oil fields working as a derrick. Over the course of his career, he eventually rose to the position of operations manager.
Toby and several other mates established the Easy Mony Band when he was 20 years old. Toby continued to work in the oil fields in addition to performing with his band at several bars in the area. In 1982, at the height of the oil industry’s difficult times, he was fired from his job.
After that, Toby participated in semi-professional football with the Oklahoma City Drillers, where he played defensive end. After struggling for a while, Easy Money eventually achieved some measure of success in the region and began performing in honky-tonks in the states of Texas and Oklahoma.
Toby Keith Career
Toby travelled to Nashville in the early 1990s and played his guitar and sang on the world-famous Music Row in that city. He distributed copies of his demo tape to the many record labels that were located in the city.
His demo did not generate any attention, so he headed back to Oklahoma where he came from. He had made a pact with himself that he would secure a recording contract by the time he turned 30, failing which he would pursue other career goals.
Then, as fate would have it, a supporter of the Easy Money Band who worked as a flight attendant ended up giving his demo tape to a Mercury Records executive when she was on a flight she was working. After hearing Toby’s music and being impressed by his sound, the executive offered him a recording contract.
Toby’s first single, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” was released in 1993 and quickly climbed to the top of the country music charts. The song has made it into the top 100 of the charts that track popular music.
More than three million people had listened to “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” on the radio by the time the 1990s came to a close. It was the country song that was played the most during the decade of the 1990s, yes, even more than “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus.
Before departing Mercury Records in 1998, Keith recorded his first four studio albums for the label, which were titled “Toby Keith” in 1993, “Boomtown” in 1994, “Blue Moon” in 1996, and “Dream Walkin'” in 1997.
These albums were all published by different divisions of Mercury Records. These albums each spawned multiple singles that charted in the top ten. The year 1998 marked Keith’s signing with DreamWorks Records Nashville, and the year 1999 saw the release of his breakthrough single, titled “How Do You Like Me Now?!”
This song, which is the title track to his 1999 album of the same name, was the most successful country hit of the year 2000 and was one of numerous songs that reached the top of the charts while he was working for DreamWorks Nashville. His next three albums, “Pull My Chain,” “Unleashed,” and “Shock’n Y’all,” each generated three more number ones, and all of the albums were certified four times Platinum. His first album, “Pull My Chain,” was certified four times Platinum.
From 1993 through 2000, Toby came out with a brand new record each and every year. Every release moved at least 500,000 copies, and the vast majority moved significantly more. Toby successfully negotiated the right to buy back his album, “How Do You Like Me Now,” from the label for the sum of $93,000 after the label turned down many songs that appeared on Toby’s 1999 release.
After that, he sold the rights to DreamWorks for a total of $200,000 in cash. Following its first release, “How Do You Like Me Now” went on to sell 3.1 million copies worldwide.
There are a total of over 40 million albums that have been sold around the world thanks to Keith’s 19 studio albums, two holiday albums, and five compilation albums that he has created. His album “Unleashed,” which was released in 2002, was a huge commercial success, selling three million copies. It featured a smash duet with Willie Nelson titled “Beer for My Horses.”
Toby Keith Entrepreneurial Career
Toby made a purchase of a 10% stake in Big Machine for the sum of $400,000 in the year 2004. That investment may have seemed like a risky one at the time, but it turned out to be very profitable in the end. Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts, and Taylor Swift were the next artists to sign with Big Machine Records. To this day, Toby Keith receives a portion of the proceeds whenever any of Big Machine’s musicians get paid.
Toby was presented with an opportunity not long after he established his record labels when he was contacted by Don Marrandino, the proprietor of a casino in Las Vegas. Inside of Marrandino’s casino, there was going to be a restaurant with a Toby Keith motif, and it was going to be called “I Love This Bar and Grill.” It was one of the top 50 grossing restaurants in the United States by the time the year 2004 came to a close.
This would be sufficient for the vast majority of individuals. Not so with Toby Keith though. Toby made the decision to enter the liquor trade after learning that his close buddy Sammy Hagar had fetched $80 million for the sale of his Cabo Wabo tequila company in 2007. This prompted Toby to consider entering the industry himself.
He gave some thought to launching his own brand of vodka or bourbon. It turned out that producing large quantities of bourbon was difficult, and the market for vodka appeared to be quite competitive. Therefore, he decided to go with mezcal. Toby located a distributor and immediately started trying mezcal from a variety of small, family-owned distilleries. In March of 2011, the mezcal called “Wild Shot” was introduced.
By the end of the year, Wild Shot had established itself as the premium mezcal brand that consumers in the United States preferred the most. Toby’s empire consisted of many different businesses, the last of which was his booze business. An empire that brings in between $60 and $100 million for him each year, according to estimates.
Toby Keith Personal Life
In a ceremony held on March 24, 1984, Keith wed Tricia Lucus. The couple currently has three children: a daughter named Shelley, who was born in 1980 and adopted by Keith in 1984; a son named Stelen, who was born in 1985. (born in 1997). Through his daughter Shelley, he also has one grandson in addition to his two granddaughters.
Keith’s father passed away as the result of an automobile accident on March 24, 2001. The incident, along with the tragic events of September 11, 2001, inspired Keith to write the controversial song “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American).”
Although the song was a huge hit, particularly among members of the armed forces, it led to tension between Keith and Natalie Maines, the singer for The Dixie Chicks.
Read More: Ariana DeBose Net Worth: What is The Net Worth of Dancer And Singer Arian DeBose?
Read More: Jessica Chastain Net Worth: How Rich Actress And Producer Jessica Chastain Is?