Trace Adkins nearly died in 1994, and more than three decades later the country star is describing in vivid, unsparing terms how a bullet from one of his ex-wives tore through his heart and both lungs — a wound he now calls a “kill shot.” The 64-year-old singer laid out the harrowing sequence of events during a recent appearance on podcast host Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend with Theo Von” podcast, where he discussed his four marriages and the night one of them ended in gunfire. Adkins, who has spent a career singing about grit and survival, told the story with an almost clinical calm. He was in the middle of a marriage on the rocks, he said, and his wife wanted him gone. He refused to leave.
The Night It Happened
According to Adkins, the confrontation escalated as his wife held a gun. He said he approached her with his hand outstretched, asking her to hand it over, when she fired the shot at point-blank range. The bullet exited under his right arm — a straight line through the center of his chest.
“She put it under my left arm and the bullet came out under my right arm,” Adkins said, describing the trajectory that passed through his heart and both lungs. He characterized the injury bluntly, calling it a kill shot that went straight through.
What he remembers of the moment is fragmentary. Adkins said that when a situation turns that serious, the body takes over and shock sets in. He recalled getting up off the floor, taking a few steps, then collapsing again — and nothing after that. He does not remember feeling the bullet at all.
The reason he lived, he said, came down to physics. Adkins explained that doctors told him the close-range shot passed cleanly through without expanding, creating a survivable wound rather than a fatal one.
The Pain Came Later
The gunshot itself, Adkins said, was not what he remembers as agony. The suffering arrived during recovery, when surgeons had to open and crack his chest to repair the damage to his heart and lungs. That, he said, was where the real pain lived.
Perhaps the most striking part of Adkins’ account is what he chose not to do afterward. He declined to press charges against the woman who shot him. He does not believe she was trying to kill him, and he suggested she may not have grasped what the weapon was capable of.
Adkins said he had never seen her hold or fire a gun, even though he owned several and shot them often. He recounted that she knew he kept firearms but that he had never witnessed her handle one, and he doubted she understood the consequences of pulling the trigger. In his words, she thought it was a toy.
The shooting took place in 1994, the same year he separated from his second wife, Julie Curtis. The couple divorced later that year.
Four Marriages and a Fresh Start
Before Curtis, Adkins was married to Barbara Lewis. After his divorce from Curtis, he wed Rhonda Forlaw, from whom he separated in 2014. He is now married to Canadian actress Victoria Pratt, whom he married in October 2019 in a ceremony officiated by fellow country star Blake Shelton.
The podcast conversation surfaced as Adkins has been discussing his single “American Made.” Speaking to Fox News Digital about the song, the singer reflected on patriotism and family — including Pratt, who recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He said she is proud to be an American, and he counts himself the same, noting his own family has lived in the country for generations.
It is a jarring contrast: a song celebrating American pride, released by a man who came within inches of dying more than 30 years ago. But that duality has long defined Adkins, whose public persona has always leaned into hardship overcome. The story he told Von adds a chilling chapter to a life already marked by close calls, and it does so without theatrics — just the flat recollection of a man who got up, took a few steps, went down, and somehow lived to sing about it.