Stephen Colbert: What Toby Keith Taught Him
Stephen Colbert paid tribute to his friend Toby Keith on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night (2/6). He told the audience, sitting at his desk, “As you’ve probably heard, last night we lost one of the greats. I was shocked and saddened when I heard the news. I knew that Toby was ill and fighting stomach cancer for some time, but I still thought that we’d see each other again and that we’d hear him on the stage. I was lucky enough to become friends with Toby over the years, as improbable as that seems.”
Colbert then explained that he met Toby when he appeared on his Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, and he shared that there was “a not-so-helpful legend that I had knives out for some of my guests, and it didn’t help that at the beginning, I sometimes did.”
He continued, “I remember having some kind of plan for Toby, something related to his ‘boot in your a–‘ song.” Stephen recalled that just before the interview, he decided to welcome him and “See who he is, and what do you know, we hit it off like a house on fire. I could not believe how much I enjoyed talking to Toby Keith.”
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Stephen noted that Toby had a good time on the show, too, because after the show, as the two men met in the hall as Keith was leaving, Toby turned to Colbert and said, “Hey man, you do a great job. Whatever the f—it is [that] you do.”
Colbert took it as “the greatest compliment,” and one of his writers at the time had Toby’s quote stitched on a pillow and gave it to him for Christmas. It’s been in his office ever since. Stephen said, “That day, Toby taught me not to pre-judge my guests and to have my intentions but to keep my eyes open to the reality of who they are. For that lesson and a lot of other things, I am always gonna be grateful.”
The talk show host went on to say that he and Toby stayed close, and he had him on his Christmas special in 2008 and on his Late Show in 2015, where he gave him a special guitar that Colbert’s son now plays.
Also, in 2015, Colbert inducted Toby into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, which he called “one of his greatest honors.”
Colbert said, “I think he enjoyed how unlikely a pair we seemed. I sure did. You know like when people are excited when a duck and a horse are friends? For the record, I was the duck. Toby taught me not to judge people too quickly, and with his passing, I’m gonna try to remember that again. I’m sure Toby and I disagreed about many things like so many Americans do these days.”
He closed by saying he was brokenhearted that Toby Keith was gone, adding, “Thank you, big dog.”
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