20 Things Worth Knowing About Tim McGraw

The country superstar and husband to Faith Hill on food, football, and his four-female family.

Thirty No. 1 singles, three Grammys, and 14 Academy of Country Music Awards later, the biggest country singer since Garth Brooks dismisses his pleasing voice as nothing special. "It's mine, and I gotta live with it," says Louisiana-born Tim McGraw, 42. "I'm not a virtuoso. I just do it my way." But get this modest master talking about food, football, or his four-female family (country star Faith Hill and daughters Gracie, 12, Maggie, 11, and Audrey, 7), and he's mighty lively. Here, 20 things you may not know about McGraw. 1. Three things I can't live without:
My family, Italian food ... and exercise.

2. My secret talent is ...
Cooking. Our Christmas Eve tradition is spaghetti and meatballs. My mom used to cook it, and now I do.

3. On the other hand, Faith ...
Cooks a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, cornbread dressing, butter beans, green beans, and mashed potatoes—the traditional Southern Thanksgiving meal.

4. I love watching ...
Football. My teams are the Titans and the Saints. I will watch any and every game I can possibly see till February. Even high school. Our kids aren't in high school yet, but I think we missed one game last year. My nephew now plays for a different high school, so I'm going to be back and forth between two schools all season.

5. In my new movie, The Blind Side, I play a father who adopts a kid from the ghetto who becomes a football star. I took the role because ...
I'm a sports fanatic. Also, though I wasn't sure if I wanted to make another football movie after Friday Night Lights, the chance to be in a film about people doing great things for each other was hard to walk away from.

6. My costar Sandra Bullock is ...
Down-to-earth. If you hadn't seen her in movies, you might think she lived next door. The only thing I regret is that I didn't get to meet her husband, [motorcycle mogul] Jesse James. He was in the middle of trying to break a land speed record in a hydrogen rocket car.

7. My favorite football movie is ...
North Dallas Forty. I'd love to remake it.

8. I cry when I watch ...
Everything! I'm half Irish—I cry at commercials. I recently saw a movie called The Greatest. We watched it at 8 a.m., and I was ruined for the rest of the day. I had a headache from crying.

9. My favorite song to sing in the shower is ...
"Hotel California."

10. When I wrote the first single from my new record [Southern Voice] about a gold-digging woman, my wife said ...
"Well, I hope no one thinks that's about me." I said, "No, baby. Everybody knows you make plenty of money!"

11. I wish I had more ...
Patience. I have a hard time waiting, which is horrible because I live with four women. I had to learn not to get dressed until they say they're ready to walk out the door, because I'll still have 30 minutes.

12. The best thing about being the only man in the house is ...
I have my own chair. It's a double-wide recliner. It's ugly brown leather—fake leather, probably. We're building a new house, and Faith swears it's not going to make the trip. She hates it. Until she sits in it. Then she loves it.

13. The worst thing about being the only man in the house ...
Somebody's always in my chair.

14. My daughters will be ready to date when ...
I'm dead.

15. I like my wife to wear ...
Nothing.

16. What I mean is ...
No makeup, though nothing in general is great too. But Faith is great in jeans and a T-shirt. She's great anyway, but when she's dressed down, she's the best.

17. The best thing to do for a woman is ...
To listen. I learned it from my wife. You don't have to give a solution. I'm bad about jumping in three words after she starts talking and trying to find a solution. It's not the right thing to do.

18. The most important thing I learned from my mother was ...
To dream.

19. The most important thing I learned from my father was ...
To be there. And I learned that because I got the opposite. [McGraw didn't meet his father, the late baseball player Tug McGraw, until he was 11.]

20. My favorite time of day is ...
Late afternoon, about the time the news comes on. Everyone is home; dinner is cooking. And bedtime. We put the kids to sleep, and Faith and I get into bed and take a deep breath.

From Reader's Digest - November 2009

 

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