Country Pop Bites: Clay Walker – July 29

Did you know that on this day in Country Music History in 2000 Clay Walker sang the national anthem at the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction in Canton, Ohio?

It’s true! Honorees included Joe Montana and Howie Long. Walker also joined Dwight Yoakam, Sawyer Brown and Alecia Elliott in a post-induction concert.

Check out this Clay Walker video!

Here are 5 little known truths about Clay Walker.

• Ernest Clayton Walker Jr. was born on August 19, 1969 in Beaumont, Texas to Ernest and Danna Walker. He was the oldest of five children.
• He stopped at a local radio station to deliver a tape of a song that he had written when he was just a teenager, and although the morning disc jockey told him that the station's policies prohibited playing self-submitted tapes, he played Walker's song and said that it was "too good to pass up."
• After graduating from Vidor High School in 1987, he began working at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant.
• He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1996.
• He has been married twice. Once to a rodeo queen named Lori Jayne Lampson. They had two daughters: MaClay DaLayne, born on January 14, 1996, and Skylor ClayAnne, born on May 14, 1999. The couple divorced in 2003. He then married model Jessica Craig on September 28, 2007 and had two more children with her: a son named William Clayton, born August 5, 2008, and a daughter named Mary Elizabeth, born December 27, 2009.