Intro Toby Keith is going into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year and the big question is did he know he died on February 5th leaving about 6 weeks in between son Steen accepted on the Family's behalf and he didn't exactly shine a light on what the family knew it sounds a bit crass but the other question to ask is did Toby care I mean on one hand this is country music's biggest honor what every kid dreams of but on the other Toby kind of always walked to the beat of his own drum again This is Country Musics Biggest Honor and again he chose to live his life outside of Nashville in Music Row it's part of what made him great on Tuesday March 19th we're going to provide a definitive answer to this second question that makes clear what Toby Keith thought of the Country Music Hall of Fame but today we're focused on one detail of all of this that may just take your breath away in a bad way subscribers know we go a little deeper into why country music news matters and handle sensitive issues properly we'll do that here as well meet Sarah trer Country Music Hall of Fame she's the CEO of the Country Music Association who along with the Country Music Hall of Fame facilitates this whole process inductees are decided by voters and this year they chose Toby Keith John Anderson and Studio guitarist James Burton to be the 153rd 154th and 155th members it's a good class Toby is the modern era artist and we tend to focus a little bit more on those inductees but that's not to dismiss the Great accomplishments from John Anderson and James Burton let us know if you'd like to see some more video about them in the comments section below and we'll try to make it happen Tobys Death Brooks and Dunn had been announcing inductees but Sarah interrupted them to explain how the voting worked specifically she wanted to talk about the timeline nominations are revealed in the fall and the first ballot goes out just before the holidays from there there's a final ballot that this year closed on February 2nd this year we anticipated receiving the names of our final inductees on Tuesday February the 6th as we know now we woke up that morning to the heartbreaking news that our friend Toby Keith had lost his long battle with stomach cancer what's Bittersweet is just that a few hours later our team received word from deoy that he'd been elected in the modern era category I'm stunned Toby Keith literally died one day too soon to learn all about the Country Music Hall of Fame results he didn't know nobody knew until about 24 hours after he past truly one of the greatest honors of my job is getting to inform these inductees that they're the newest members of the hallowed class my heart sank that Tuesday afternoon knowing that we missed the chance to inform Toby while he was still with us but I have no doubt that he's smiling down on us knowing that he'll always be quote as good as he once was what's your reaction to this news Final Thoughts it's sad but part of me is a little upset that he never found out I don't know maybe I'm just going through the stages here Sun stell's remarks which you saw that started this video came after this but I'm going to stop short of saying he looked peeved he was certainly serious and his remarks were brief but he's certainly going through a lot right now and he's never really spoken on a stage in this kind of setting few would argue that Toby Keith is undeserving of being in the Country Music Hall of Fame in fact we made an entire video about why he's deserving and the time is right right here YouTube also picked out a video that it thinks you'll like right here I'm Billy Dukes your taste of country thanks for watching and thanks for subscribing