Getting pretty candid.
In his newly-released The Anthology Part IV: Going Home that came out in early December, Garth Brooks got candid about moving back to Oklahoma when his daughters were very young. He retired from music in 2000, making the decision to go raise his kids in his home state with his first wife, Sandy Mahl (they ultimately finalized the divorce in 2001).
He says he was going to learn to be a dad, though it ended up that his marriage ended, and he was “as lost as” he’s ever been:
“So, I announced my retirement and went to Oklahoma. That’s where you’re going to learn to be a dad, watch your marriage end, get as lost as you’ve ever been. How do you do that? Well, I sure didn’t know — I had to go through it in order to find out how to do it.
It was one of those things. More than anything else at that moment, I wanted to be a good dad, just one-tenth what my own dad was. My job before that was pretty easy. ‘Honey, I’d love to help with the kids, but I got to go out on a tour where people are going to be screaming my name, and everyone’s going to be trying to make me happy.’”
Garth admitted that is was obviously a ton of work, because he no longer had the excuse of work to get out of digging in and really being a hands-on father:
“My God, it was my work, but I couldn’t blame not being a real dad on that anymore. Thanks to God and the people, we were more than financially secure, and these kids needed their own lives. They didn’t ask to come into this world, I asked for them to come into this world.”
They stayed with his in-laws when they first got to Oklahoma, and really, the move was one last attempt to save their marriage, which didn’t work out in the long run:
“When we first got out to Oklahoma, we stayed at Sandy’s parents. These were great people, people that I love. They were the only ones I really knew out there. Sandy and I were going to make one last run at our marriage.
Because, c’mon, you were married with your family present and in front of God, so you keep thinking it’s just got to work. Just one last go.”
Garth called the divorce the “roughest” time of his life, but he and Sandy made it work for the sake of their family, and they were both able to be part of their daughters’ lives every day, a luxury when it comes to divorced parents, for sure, and it sounds like they went very much out of their way to make that happen, which is admirable:
“I hope it continues to be the roughest. I hope I never have anything worse than that era, right there. That hurt… Sandy and I started exchanging the kids everyday at six. For fourteen years we exchanged the kids everyday at six, because we didn’t think it was fair that they would have to live without their mom or their dad.
So, there I was, back in Oklahoma where I was raised, settled in and just getting ready for… I didn’t know what. I was going to start learning every other day at 6 p.m. And there was going to be a lot of learning.”
For as much crap as Garth gets for some of his more unique personality quirks, and deservedly so in many cases, in addition to his ongoing sexual assault lawsuit, he seems to be a great dad and clearly love his kids very much.
Of course, he later married fellow country artist Trisha Yearwood. He also wrote about asking his ex-wife for permission to marry her, and they’ve been together for almost 20 years now.