Every time I hear this story, it just shocks my brain all over again.
For those who may not know or who also have completely forgotten about Trace Adkins’ wild lore, we almost lost the country music star back in February 1994…thanks to his ex-wife, who put a bullet through his ribcage. Now, over thirty years later, the story is resurfacing thanks to Theo Von’s most recent This Past Weekend podcast episode.
Midway through the show, Von curiously asks, “I heard that one of your wives— I dont even know how to say this— they shot ya.” Adkins let out a disgruntled sigh, reminiscing on the altercation, hilariously noting, “Yeah, that took it a little far, I thought.”
I mean, I’m no marriage counselor, but I’d have to agree. There are probably a few better ways to dissolve a fight before bringing out firearms, but what do I know?
His second wife, Julie Curtis, ended up pointing a .38 pistol at the “Honkytonk Badonkadonk” singer after they had gotten into a fight about his binge drinking. While Adkins has also been very open about his alcohol abuse over the years and owns up to it, he told Von that his wife whipping out a gun on him was “totally uncalled for.”
He added, “Just leave, you know. Let’s just call it quits. We dont have to go that far.” He then recalled the moment when he tried to disarm his wife, reaching his arm out to her and lo and behold, she shot him with a straight-lined bullet.
Adkins, who never ended up pressing charges at the time, was also fairly gracious in his retelling, noting that he doesn’t think she had any idea what the gun would do: “I don’t think she knew what was about to happen when she pulled that trigger. She thought it was a toy.”
Guess the moral of the story here is that when your wife is mad and tells you to leave while waving a gun at you, it might be a good idea to leave. Atkins “didn’t wanna leave,” though, and stood his ground, resulting in a miraculous bullet swooping through right under his left arm and out underneath his right arm.
Luckily, his saving grace was the fact that his wife, whom he had never seen shoot a gun before, had such a clean shot that the bullet didn’t have time to expand in him. The “kill shot,” as he calls it, split straight through his heart and both his lungs but shot at “point blank velocity, at muzzle velocity so it didn’t have time to mushroom.”
Luckily, he felt no pain either, telling Von that his only memory was stumbling afterwards: “I just remember getting off the floor and then taking a few steps and then going back down.” Adding some comedic relief to the story, Von hilariously replied, “Thank God she shot you so close then.”
Back in 2022, Adkins told People magazine that his recovery, despite being painful, wasn’t the real kicker: “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 sure enough, two years later Adkins released his first single, “There’s a Girl in Texas.”
For good reason, Adkins and his trigger-happy wife ended up splitting that same year, but he went on to remarry twice more, currently happily wedded to his fourth Canadian sweetheart, Victoria Pratt. Although, he also mentions on the episode that he’s not even sure if their marriage is legit since Blake Shelton was the officiant.
As for his ex, she did, in fact, apologize, and he forgives her (as much as you can when someone tries to kill you, I guess), sharing, “I don’t think she meant to do it.”
Watch the full episode below: