Recently, soft-spoken country star Tim McGraw opened up about life, music, family, and the secret he discovered as a child that changed his identity forever.

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Tim McGraw was raised in Louisiana by his mother and Horace Smith, whom he believed to be his father. As McGraw recently revealed on Oprah's Master Class (featured below), this proved not to be the case. While going through his mother's closet as a kid, McGraw found his birth certificate in a shoebox.

Upon reading it he found his mother's name listed beside that of his father's, professional baseball player Tug McGraw. Tug played for Philadelphia and young Tim had been familiar with his father as a baseball player, but the idea that Tug was his biological father, not Smith, was quite a shock.

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"It was just so out of nowhere..." explained McGraw, "It was almost like an alien showed up and introduced itself...That's how foreign it was to me."

When Tim was 11-years-old he "really started paying attention" to his father's baseball career and met him for a brief lunch before going to watch the game.

Tim very much wanted acknowledgment and approval from this man, but aside from a going to a few baseball games, the country singer did not have any more contact with the man until he was eighteen.

Only as an adult did Tim realize the damage this secret, as well as his father's absence, had done.

Tags: Tim McGraw Tug McGraw