In 1997, Adkins married Rhonda Forlaw, a former publicity manager at Arista Records who helped catapult Trace to country music fame. Two broken marriages didn’t deter the singer from getting hitched again. Surprisingly enough, the singer didn’t press charges against Curtis and the couple divorced after three years of marriage. “ went through both my lungs and both ventricles of my heart,” stated Adkins.

“I said, ‘Give me the gun, or I’m gonna take it away from you and beat your damn brains out with it.’ I would never have done that, but I told her in hopes that it would scare her.” Instead the gun went off. The pair got into an epic fight over Trace’s drinking habits and his wife grabbed the family’s handgun and as he told People in a 1997 interview, “Being a macho guy like I am, I tried to scare it out of her hand,” he explained. Speaking of ex-wives and near death experiences, in 1994 the crooner was shot in the chest by his second wife, Julie Curtis. This incident resulted in a punctured lung, fractured ribs, and the tip of his nose being ripped off and then reattached. At the tender age of 17, Adkins was involved in an automobile accident in which his 1955 pickup truck smashed into the back of an empty school bus. Saying that the country star is no stranger to injury is an extreme understatement- his history of mishaps goes back to his youth. Also during Trace Adkins’ life before fame, he almost had both legs crushed by a bulldozer and landed in a neck brace after flipping his truck over on an icy overpass. He hung it up after suffering multiple serious injuries, including having a pinky finger severed sewed back on, and getting trapped on an offshore rig during a violent hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Trace Adkins, 57, emerged onto the country music scene in 1996 when he released his debut album, Dreamin’ Out Loud. Prior to his musical career, the distinctive bass-baritone singer worked as a roughneck in the lucrative oil industry.

Trace adkins country singer