Trace Adkins is revisiting one of the wildest chapters of his life, more than 30 years after his second wife shot him during a domestic fight.
The country star opened up about the 1994 incident during a recent appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast, where the conversation turned from music and life on the road to the night Adkins nearly died.
Von brought up the story carefully, asking Adkins about the shooting that has long been part of the “Honkytonk Badonkadonk” singer’s almost unbelievable backstory.
“I heard that one of your wives— I dont even know how to say this— they shot ya.”
Adkins answered with the kind of dry humor only a man who survived it could get away with.
“Yeah, that took it a little far, I thought.”
The shooting happened in February 1994, years before Adkins became one of country music’s most recognizable voices.
At the time, he was married to his second wife, Julie Curtis, and the two got into a fight about his binge drinking.
Adkins has spoken openly for years about his alcohol abuse and has not tried to pretend he was blameless in the chaos surrounding that period of his life.
But he told Von that Curtis pulling a gun during the argument crossed a line.
“totally uncalled for.”
He added, “Just leave, you know. Let’s just call it quits. We dont have to go that far.”
Curtis grabbed a .38-caliber pistol during the fight and pointed it at him.
Adkins said he tried to disarm her by reaching toward the weapon.
That is when the gun went off.
The bullet tore through his torso, entering under one arm and exiting beneath the other.
Adkins did not press charges at the time.
Decades later, he still describes the shooting with a surprising amount of restraint.
“I don’t think she knew what was about to happen when she pulled that trigger. She thought it was a toy.”
The near-fatal moment could have ended Adkins’ life before the rest of America ever learned his name.
Instead, the bullet passed through him in a way he has described as almost impossible to believe.
Adkins said the round went through his heart and both lungs, but because it was fired at close range, it did not expand inside him.
He called it a “kill shot” that somehow failed to kill him.
He told Von he did not remember feeling pain right away.
“I just remember getting off the floor and then taking a few steps and then going back down.”
Von responded with dark comic timing.
“Thank God she shot you so close then.”
Adkins has long treated the story as part tragedy, part warning and part country-song chaos.
But he has also said the physical wound was not the worst scar he carried.
In 2022, Adkins told People magazine that pain from injuries never affected him the same way heartbreak did.
“The physical pain— broken bones and surgeries and bullets and getting beat up and cut— has never really bothered me. I have a high tolerance for it. It’s the broken hearts that left the deepest scars.”
He also noted, “It wasn’t my time to go,” and the timeline seems to prove it.
Two years after the shooting, Adkins released his debut single, “There’s a Girl in Texas,” launching the country career that would eventually make him a household name.
Adkins and Curtis split the same year as the shooting.
He later remarried twice more and is now married to Canadian actress Victoria Pratt.
On Von’s podcast, Adkins joked that he is not even sure whether that marriage is technically legitimate because Blake Shelton officiated the ceremony.
As for Curtis, Adkins said she apologized, and he has forgiven her.
“I don’t think she meant to do it.”
It is a remarkable ending for a story that could have been much darker.
Adkins survived the bullet, the drinking, the divorce and the kind of violent domestic blowup that would have swallowed a lesser career whole.
Three decades later, he can sit across from Theo Von and tell the story with a laugh.
Not many country singers have lived a lyric that wild and walked away to sing about anything else.
