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Tim McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country music singer who has achieved many number one hits on the country singles and album charts, with total sales in excess of 40 million units. He is married to country singer Faith Hill and is the son of baseball player Tug McGraw. His trademark hit songs include "Indian Outlaw", "Don't Take the Girl", "I Like It, I Love It", "Something Like That", "It's Your Love" (featuring his wife, Faith Hill), and "Live Like You Were Dying".
As of his 2006, McGraw has had nine consecutive albums debut at Number One on the Billboard with twenty-six of his singles reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country 100 chart, with three of them being named the #1 country song of the year ("It's Your Love", "Just To See You Smile", and "Live Like You Were Dying"). He has won 3 Grammys, 11 Academy of Country Music awards, 10 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, 9 American Music Awards and 3 People's Choice Awards. His Soul2Soul II tour with Faith Hill in 2006 became the highest-grossing tour in country music history, and ranked as one of the top five in all genres of music.
McGraw has ventured into acting, with a supporting role in the Billy Bob Thornton film Friday Night Lights and a lead role in 2006's Flicka. He is also a minority owner of the Arena Football League's Nashville Kats.
McGraw was born Samuel Timothy McGraw in Delhi, LA, a town in Richland Parish, the son of waitress Elizabeth D'Agostino Trimble and Tug McGraw, a relief pitcher for the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. McGraw is of Italian-Irish descent on his mother's side and Scots-Irish descent on his father's side.
Raised by his mother, in Start, LA east of Monroe, LA, McGraw grew up believing his stepfather, Horace Smith, was his birth father. While searching his mother's closet when he was eleven to see if he could find hidden Christmas presents, McGraw discovered his birth certificate. After his discovery his mother revealed that his birth father was Tug McGraw, and brought him to meet his father for the first time. Tug denied being Tim's father until Tim was 18 years old, when Tug first noticed how similar Tim looked to him when he was that young, and the two remained close until Tug's death in 2004.
As a child, McGraw loved to play competitive sports, including baseball, even though he did not know Tug McGraw was his father. He studied sports medicine at Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship, and roomed with former NFL quarterback Doug Pederson where he became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. During this period, he learned to play guitar and would frequently perform and sing for tips, although he claims that his roommates often hid the guitar because he was so bad. In 1989, on the day his hero Keith Whitley died, McGraw dropped out of college to head to Nashville and pursue a musical career.
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