Tim McGraw Remembers Meeting His Favorite ‘New Face’

It's hard to believe that there was a time when Tim McGraw was a newcomer to country music. The singer remembers those times well, and he recalls his first major performance at the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville. This gathering of radio movers and shakers always concludes with the "New Faces" show, and McGraw was a part of that concert 15 years ago.

"The band couldn't get the songs down," McGraw recalls of the 1994 show. "I was going to sing 'Indian Outlaw' and 'Don't Take the Girl,' and they hadn't even heard the last one before ... I was really close to getting sick, because I didn't want to be in front of all those radio people and not be able to perform it right. But they gave me extra time to work with the band, and we got it the way we wanted it."

McGraw says the crowd reaction to his two songs was great. But there was something much more significant that happened that night at the New Faces show.

"They took a group picture with all the new artists, and I got to meet my future wife that night," McGraw gushes. "That was first time I met Faith Hill. I was actually dating someone else then, and they kind of looked at me and they knew something was up. They even made a comment about it and I said, 'No, you don't know what you're talking about'."

Apparently his date really did know what she was talking about. It wasn't much later that McGraw and Hill started dating. And, as we all know, they're now happily married with three daughters.

Country Radio Seminar's 2009 New Faces Show is this Friday, March 6 and will feature Lady Antebellum, James Otto, Kellie Pickler, Chuck Wicks and the Zac Brown Band.