Terri Clark Shares Why The Late Toby Keith Was 'Like A Big Brother To Me'

Terri Clark shared a heartfelt tribute to late country legend Toby Keith, remembering the recently-announced Country Music Hall of Fame inductee as “a big brother to me.”

Clark appears on the latest episode of Get Real with Caroline Hobby, where she discussed her decades-long career as a country artist, moving to Nashville, Tennessee, landing a job singing at Tootsie’s — a honky tonk located on Nashville’s famous Lower Broadway — for $15 per day, the heartbreak after losing her mother to lung cancer and more. During their conversation, podcast host Caroline Hobby asked Clark about her many “famous friends.” She noted that Clark has toured with Reba McEntire, worked with Dolly Parton, toured with George Strait and more. Hobby noted that Clark’s tribute to Keith “made me tear up.”

Keith died on February 5 after a years-long battle with stomach cancer. He was 62. A statement confirmed at that time that Keith “passed peacefully…surrounded by his family.” Clark was one of many in the country music community to pay tribute to the beloved singer-songwriter on social media. She posted a throwback photo on Instagram and wrote: “You literally took me under your wing. I feel lucky to have shared so many great times with you out there on the road. We lost a friend but country music lost an icon and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Sending love and tender mercies to his family. You will be missed [Toby Keith] see you on Heavens highway …🥲”

Clark said during her conversation with Hobby that “I didn’t know he was that close to gone,” when Keith performed a run of three shows in Las Vegas in December. “Toby and I toured together for an entire year. He felt like a big brother to me, you know, and he was so — he was such a good conversationalist. You could ask him anything and he would always give you an honest answer.

“He was just a really good guy, and I think one of the best songwriters we’ve ever had,” Clark continued. “His shows were fun. We had a lot of fun out there. We played practical jokes on each other. He was always playing basketball with the band and crew. …That's where I do like social media, is the tributes that you can pay to somebody when, you know, they pass on, and all of the love that you can feel from everywhere in the world for them [she highlighted Brooks & Dunn’s tribute as one that particularly stood out to her]. It's just sad. (He was) way too young.” Clark also said she “loved he was his spirit was him right to the end, like him getting up in Vegas and seeing him hold his guitar up and saying, ‘we're gonna crush it.’ …He was the epitome of just honest and unabashedly who he is, unapologetically who he is, and patriotic.”

Clark has also built her career “unapologetically,” Hobby noted as she shared a clip from the podcast conversation on Instagram. She added that Clark reflects on “her incredible 20+ year journey in music plus advice she has to the new crop of artists trying to pave their own way.” Find Get Real with Caroline Hobby on iHeartRadio here.