Charles Kelley – The Countryrock Star Who Performed His Own Sobriety Check

Charles Kelley, the colead singer of Nashville heavyweight Lady A, has come a long way in recovery-with a lot of help from fans, bandmates, and support groups.

- By Lauren Larson

The pros and cons of being a sober country star are well-balanced. On one hand: If you slip up, some guy in some bar who is quick with his phone will make sure everyone knows it. On the other hand: The resources available to you are unbounded, and you can call up Tim McGraw for advice.

But the refrains of sobriety often sound the same whether you're 41-year-old Charles Kelley, colead singer of Lady A, or one of the folks in his audience. "In almost every story, there's atinge of similarity," Kelley says. He's been attending men's recovery meetings for several months now, listening to the stories of others. "How you can justify it. How you hide your drinking. How you say, 'Oh, I just had a couple on the golf course.' Which really meant...six."

Likewise with "just one glass of wine," which is what Kelley told his wife, Cassie McConnell Kelley, over dinner in Paris this past spring. He had been trying to quit drinking "on my own," he says, since January 2022. It was his third attempt at sobriety. The first was six or seven years ago, at the bandmates, urging of his Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood. After that dinner, he slipped back into a cycle of escalating drinking-once he was home, it was two glasses, then three, then he was right back in it-that jammed to a halt this past summer, when he and Cassie were on vacation with friends in Greece. Kelley doesn't feel that he ever hit the proverbial "crashing a car in a ditch" rock bottom. But this time, his decision to stop drinking felt different. "This is the first time I actually put tools in place," he told his bandmates, who were supportive but skeptical after witnessing previous attempts. There would be no more "on my own."