Toby Keith's Net Worth at the Time of His Death
Toby Keith.
Toby Keith died at the age of 62 after a battle with stomach cancer, leaving behind an enormous music catalogue and an equally enormous net worth.
His earnings over the years were as much the result of his business ventures as they were his album sales (if not more), although one could argue that Keith's music was at the center of it all, cultivating a loyal following and providing him with a sizable nest egg to invest in Big Machine Records at its inception (and Taylor Swift's).
Read on for more about how Keith built his net worth.
How did Toby Keith get his start?
Keith was born in Clinton, Oklahoma in 1961 to parents Carolyn Joan and Hubert K. Covel Jr. but spent many of his formative years living in or visiting Arkansas, specifically Fort Smith, where his grandmother owned Billie Garner's Supper Club. It was inside the supper club's four walls that Keith (who got his first guitar at age 8) discovered his love of music and started performing with other musicians onstage.
Although Keith worked the oil fields immediately following high school, he never gave up on music. At age 20, he formed the Easy Money Band. While the group found some success playing at honky-tonks in Oklahoma and Texas, they failed to gain traction on a trip to Nashville in the early 1990s, and it wasn't until Keith went out on his own that he got his big break. As luck would have it, a flight attendant who dug his music gave one of his tapes to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, who soon signed him.
"It was mainly the quality of what he was writing," Shedd told Forbes in 2013. "It was unlike anything on the radio at the time, and it was still really good country music."
Shedd offered Keith $20,000 for a record deal, which the artist accepted. His first single, "Should've Been a Cowboy," reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1993, and his debut self-titled album sold more than one million copies in the U.S. He was off to the races.
Related: Inside Toby Keith's Battle With Stomach Cancer
What was Toby Keith's net worth at the time of his death?
Toby Keith's net worth at the time of his death was $400 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He accumulated his wealth as a singer/songwriter and performer, but he also got rich off ventures in the restaurant industry, the liquor business and one lucrative investment in Big Machine Records.
Related: All About Toby Keith's 'Don't Let the Old Man In' and Its Meaning
Does Toby Keith own Big Machine Records?
Toby Keith does not own Big Machine Records, but he did own a minority stake in the label from its inception, making loads of money from its artists (including Taylor Swift) over the years. How did that happen? Let's back up:
After butting heads with a guy named Luke Lewis, who'd succeeded Harold Shedd, Keith bought back the rights to his would-be 1999 album How Do You Like Me Now? and sold it to rival label DreamWorks for $200,000. It went on to move 3.1 million copies.
Unfortunately, Universal's Interscope then bought out DreamWorks in 2004 and merged it with Mercury, reuniting Keith with his mortal enemy Lewis. "Here's the deal," Keith recalled saying in a 2013 interview with Forbes. "I'm not working with this son of a b---h anymore."
Keith got to negotiating: He'd give Universal a half stake in his next album plus a greatest hits compilation and in turn they would let him launch his own label, Show Dog, which Universal would distribute.
What does all that have to do with Big Machine Records? Well, along the way, Keith figured he'd share staff with Universal's Big Machine and its own budding mogul, Scott Borchetta, and while he was at it, he decided to pay $400,000 for a stake in the label, which Forbes estimated in 2013 was still at around 10%.
Borchetta went on to sign Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw and one Taylor Swift, all of whom helped make Keith one of the richest artists in country music. "Toby's a really smart businessman," Borchetta told Forbes in 2013. How did he know? "I send him checks."
How did Toby Keith make his money?
Toby Keith made his money as a singer/songwriter and musician as well as through business ventures that included his own liquor label, Wild Shot, endorsement deals with the likes of Ford, and a minority stake in Big Machine Records.
He also made his money from restaurant chains. That arm of his empire formed when a casino exec named Don Marrandino pitched him a "Toby Keith-themed bar inside Harrah's in Las Vegas," Forbes reported in 2013. "They'd call it I Love This Bar and Grill, tacking 'and Grill' to the end of one of Keith's latest hits."
Keith wasn't exactly an idle figurehead. He dictated to the chef a list of must-have items for the menu, including hand-cut French fries, hush puppies, corn bread and fried bologna sandwiches. When he saw that the latter item had been replaced at one point prior to the restaurant's launch, he pushed back. "My peeps aren't gonna come in from Texas or Florida or wherever into my bar and grill and look for pecan-crusted catfish," he said.
By the end of 2005 his bar and grill was successful enough to warrant the opening of other locations in Oklahoma City and Kansas City, and others followed in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Tulsa and at least a dozen more cities over the years.
Did Toby Keith make money from Taylor Swift?
He did. As a minority stake holder at Big Machine Records, he earned money from Taylor Swift's sales. When asked how much, Keith told Forbes in 2013, "I know there's an extra comma if you added up all the money I've ever made."
How many albums did Toby Keith release?
Keith released 21 studio albums and seven compilation albums over the years. An impressive 61 of his singles charted on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, including 20 No. 1 hits.
