Last November we posted a little guessing game on Facebook. The clue read “Dad was a Country Bro,” and plenty of you squinted at the young man in the photo and wrote back some version of “I see the resemblance in his smile.” You were right. That grin belonged to Stelen Keith Covel, the only son of Toby Keith, and the man who wore that smile on stages from Oklahoma to Las Vegas would have known it anywhere.
Toby Keith died on February 5, 2024, at 62, a little more than two years after he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He left behind his wife of nearly 40 years, Tricia, and three children who grew up behind the scenes of one of country music’s loudest careers. The little boy from our puzzle is a husband and a father himself now, and his two big sisters have built lives that would make their dad proud. Here is where Toby Keith’s kids are today.
How Did Toby Keith Become A Father Of Three?
Long before “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” hit the radio, Toby Keith was a young Oklahoman working the oil fields, and the woman he fell for, Tricia Lucus, already had a baby girl. Shelley was born in 1980, and after Toby and Tricia married on March 24, 1984, he adopted her and raised her as his own, as both People and TODAY have reported. He never treated the arrangement as anything worth explaining. Shelley was simply his oldest.
Krystal came next, born September 30, 1985, in Norman, Oklahoma. Stelen, the baby of the family, arrived on April 17, 1997, according to People and Hello! By then his father was a star, and two years later Toby put his son’s name right into the track list of his 1999 album How Do You Like Me Now?!. Track six was a ballad Toby wrote by himself and called “Heart to Heart (Stelen’s Song).”
The resemblance you spotted on our card is one the family noticed early. In a 2014 Instagram post with a childhood photo of himself and his dad, Stelen joked that people always wonder who he takes after, until “they meet my pops” and tell Toby that “Stelen’s just another you,” as TODAY reported. Before we get to the man he became, though, his sisters deserve their turn, because one of them inherited a lot more than her father’s smile.
Which Of Toby’s Kids Followed Him Onto The Stage?
That would be Krystal, now 41, who kept the Keith stage name while her brother and sister kept the family’s real surname, Covel. She was still a teenager when her father brought her into the studio to sing “Mockingbird” with him, and the two performed it together at the CMA Awards in 2004, according to TODAY and Hello! She later signed with Show Dog-Universal, the label her father co-owned, and released Whiskey & Lace in December 2013.
The single from that record, “Daddy Dance with Me,” came straight out of her own wedding to Andrew Sandubrae. “I wrote it for my father-daughter dance at my own wedding, and we just did the video,” she told Nashville Gab in 2013, as People reported. Krystal stepped back from touring to raise the couple’s two daughters, Kirby and Hensley, in Oklahoma, but she has never stopped singing for her dad. Our readers may remember the time she shared the lesson Toby taught her about patriotism.
Shelley, who by the birth year People and Hello! give is about 46 (her exact birthday has never been made public), chose the opposite path. She is the most private of the three, and both People and Taste of Country report that she is married with a son, who made Toby a grandfather for the first time. She rarely posts or gives interviews, which made it all the more striking when she stepped up to a microphone in the hardest year her family ever had.
How Did His Family Say Goodbye?
Toby had kept working through his illness for as long as his body allowed. He sang “Don’t Let the Old Man In” at the People’s Choice Country Awards in September 2023, and that December he played his final shows in Las Vegas at Park MGM. Less than two months later his family announced that he had died surrounded by them, and that he “fought his fight with grace and courage,” according to TODAY and People.
Three days after that, Stelen posted a photo of himself as a boy with his dad in a swimming pool. “You are the strongest man I have ever known,” he wrote, as HollywoodLife and TODAY reported. “The only thing I truly ever wanted in life was to make you proud. I promise I will continue to make you proud.” He signed off with four words that only a son could write: “I love you cowboy.” Krystal told her followers she was “shattered,” and called her father “my hero.”
That spring the three siblings sat with their mother at the ACM Awards while Jason Aldean sang “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” and cameras caught them in tears, according to ET. In June, Shelley spoke at the 20th Toby Keith & Friends Golf Classic, the charity event her father started, and closed with three words for him: “Good job, Daddy,” as The Oklahoman reported. Krystal took her turn that July at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In” in her father’s cowboy hat for the NBC special Toby Keith: American Icon, according to TODAY and Whiskey Riff. It was the song he had sung on television the last time.
Through all of it, one of the three kept stepping forward to speak for the family, and it was the one who looks the most like Toby.
What Is Stelen Keith Covel Doing Now?
When the Country Music Hall of Fame announced in March 2024 that Toby Keith would be inducted, it was Stelen who walked out after Brooks & Dunn introduced him. “It’s an honor to stand here and represent my father,” he said, according to Taste of Country. “He’s an amazing man, husband, father and artist.” We wrote about that moment at the time. At the medallion ceremony that October, Stelen stood just behind his mother while Tricia gave the first public speech of her life, 16 minutes long, describing Toby as a husband, father and “pop-pop to our grandkids,” as Taste of Country and American Songwriter reported.
Stelen is 29 now, and he has built a career that has nothing to do with a guitar. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2019 with a degree in entrepreneurship and venture management, according to Hello!, and he works as a real estate investor. People and TODAY both report that he co-owns several Oklahoma restaurants, including 405 Burger Bar, Hollywood Corners and Tequila Chulos.
He married his wife, Haley, in November 2021 at a golf club in Boulder City, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, according to People and Taste of Country. In February 2025, the couple shared an ultrasound with a simple caption, “Baby Covel coming this summer.” Their daughter, Millie Brooks Covel, arrived in August 2025, according to Taste of Country and Country Now. She is Toby Keith’s fourth grandchild, and the first who will only know her grandfather through the songs.
The boy whose name Toby once wrote into a ballad is now the dad in the family photos, and the smile you all recognized on our card is the one Millie gets to see every day. “Everybody in the family is good,” Toby told People back in 2010. “I was raised by good parents and I have great kids.”
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