They remained close friends until his dying day.
Tanya Tucker has been in the music industry since the very young age of just 13 years old when she scored her first major hit “Delta Dawn,” in 1972. Since then, she’s scored 56 Top 40 singles and 23 Top 40 albums, 10 #1 singles on the Billboard country charts, and she’s sold over 25 million records sold worldwide.
Fans know she had a famously tumultuous relationship with Glen Campbell, but she also dated (briefly) country icon Merle Haggard. He famously invited her onstage in Manhattan in April 1974 to sing “Delta Dawn” when was 15-years-old, and in her book Nickel Dreams: My Life, Tucker described their relationship as a meaningful but brief connection (she was in her early 20s when they had a fling of sorts).
And on an interview on The Adam Carolla Show today, he asked her about that relationship, and she explained that they didn’t really date, however she did sneak out of her house at 21-years-old to get on a plane and go see his show. Tucker was extremely close to her father, “Beau” Tucker, who managed her career since she got started as a child, and so I’m sure she snuck out to avoid having to tell her dad, even though she was obviously an adult by then and could do whatever she wanted. Haggard was also 21 years older than her, so I can see why she didn’t want to tell him… but he managed to track her down eventually.
During the interview, Tucker said her dad told her she would never be an adult as long as he was alive, so it sounds like they always had a very close and loving relationship, and she was lucky to have someone like him protecting her as she was just a child when she got started in the entertainment industry.
Tucker says she “ran away” with Haggard, though they never really dated like people think, and that night she snuck out to go to his show, her dad eventually caught up with her in Meridian, Mississippi:
“I ran away with him. I didn’t really date him. I just snuck out of my window when I was 21, and got on a plane and went to see him… where was that, a place in Texas. But my dad caught up with me in about Meridian, Mississippi.”
It was in 1980, the same year Tucker helped open the Lake Placid Winter Olympics with a performance, and she recalled Merle dropping her off at the Atlanta airport the next day and she got on a plane and everything went perfectly fine. She says they remained close friends until Merle’s death in 2016:
“That’s the year I opened the Lake Placid winter Olympics. He dropped me off in Atlanta at the airport, then I took a plane to Lake Placid, and I got there. I opened it with ‘Texas When I Die.’ But yeah, I wanted to hang out with my hero.
I just wanted to see how he was day-to-day, and we ended up being best friends right up until the day he died.”
She remains close with his family, and she says just the other day, she and her daughter were hanging out and cooking with Merle’s widow, Theresa, as well as two of his sons, Noel and Ben:
“In fact, I was just with his boys, Noel and Benny Haggard, and Teresa, his widow. And they all came over to my daughter‘s house in Nashville, Presley. We all cooked, and seeing all that Haggard’s and the Tucker’s in the kitchen was pretty funny.
And we listened to Merle Haggard, and talked about him and what we missed about him. And it’s just, you know, you don’t hear many voices… well, you won’t hear any voices like him. It’s just not any of those anymore to stand out. But I sure do miss him.”
It’s incredible that she remained close with his family for all of these years, and you can tell how much she still loves and admires her friend Merle.
The full interview is available below.
