Randy Travis’ Wife Reveals Why He Never Had Children

Randy Travis doesn’t have any children of his own and according to his wife, Mary, that’s not because he didn’t want them. Speaking to Taste of Country, Mary explained that Travis’ age difference with his ex-wife, Lib Hatcher, was the largest factor in the singer not having kids. Travis and Hatcher met in North Carolina when Travis was a teen and Hatcher was managing a country club.

The pair, who had a 16-year age difference, married in 1991 and were together for 19 years before divorcing in 2010. “He wanted children,” Mary said. “I think his relationship with Lib, who was so much older than him and they were not able to, is what he explained to me… I think it was just more the dynamics of the relationship that he had during those child-bearing years.”

Mary also spoke about her husband’s upbringing and his mom and dad’s different personalities, which affected in different ways Travis throughout his life. “His daddy was pretty tough,” she said. “A carousing sort of a guy, drank a lot, had a temper that couldn’t be tempered … was not real kind on a bad day, Randy said, but then there were these other days that were pure magic around the house and Daddy was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man in the world.” Mary added that her husband’s mother had a “soft heart,” a quality Travis shares.

“Children are very special to Randy and he’s always had a very — you know, some people are magnetic toward children and animals, and Randy was always that charismatic,” Mary said. “If a fan had a crying baby, he would take that crying baby and put it on his lap, and maybe it was just that honey voice of his, that the baby would just look at him and be quiet and the mom was just like, ‘Wow, that’s wonderful.’”

Mary and Travis married in 2015, two years after Travis suffered a massive stroke, which he is still recovering from. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Mary credited their faith by keeping them going in the years since and during the current pandemic.

“There’s no way we could have gotten through what we got through without our faith,” she said. “We were in the hospital almost six months. There were times Randy was in a coma. I know he was talking to God, and God was talking to him. I know they had conversations. I know that in the hospital every single night I had conversations with God. There’s no way you can get through something that changes your life so much in an instant, without having that faith. We leaned real hard on God. Every day we still do. It’s like they say, ‘By the grace of God, I walk.’ That’s exactly the way we feel.”