Lady A star Charles Kelley gets candid about struggle with alcoholism which nearly cost him marriage

country music star Charles Kelley talks about his journey to sobriety that jeopardized his marriage and forced his band, Lady A, to postpone their tour.

In a new interview with CBS mornings, the musician sat down alone, and eventually with his wife Cassie, and talked about his struggle with alcohol that never really seemed to be much of a problem at first.

Although he knew deep down that there was a problem with his drinking, he hadn’t faced it for a long time.

“I remember joking around with friends, I was like, ‘I’m definitely a functioning alcoholic,'” he told CBS journalist Gayle King, “I said, ‘I know I’m going to have to stop at some point, but that’s not Today.”

And that was always kind of his personal joke to himself, which eventually came to fruition. “That tells you I sort of knew,” he added, referring to his alcoholism.

Kelly, 41, says his Lady A (formerly Lady Antebellum) bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood also knew he had an alcohol problem; revealing that they confronted him about the matter about five years ago.

“I think it was more about, ‘I’m worried about you,’ and for me, if I remember correctly, it was more about how I spoke to them when I drank.” I would be very dismissive, very quickly,” he said. “There were never physical things, but very emotional and verbal, I think, outbursts. I certainly recognize that it was caused by alcohol.’

Eventually, his wife would confront Kelley about the effects of his drinking on their seven-year-old son Ward.

She told him how Ward told her things like “daddy talks a little weird” and “you and daddy, you all fight a lot,” which Kelley in turn revealed how it “crushed him” to hear.

After several therapists suggested he get treatment, Kelley would eventually commit himself to a rehabilitation center for a month, but not before he was “terrified” to take the step.

Since successfully completing his rehab stay, Kelley has relied on “group meetings” and “a case manager,” and “a device” he blows into each morning and night to gauge whether he has alcohol in his system.

‘It’s for my wife. It’s for my band. It’s for everyone to know,” he said of the device, “and so slowly but surely that has helped regain confidence that eventually that won’t be necessary.

When Cassie joined the conversation, she revealed how she had to learn that alcoholism is a “family disease,” and that she’s had to put in just as much work as Kelley did in his recovery.

“When he was in rehab and I went there for family week, one of the first messages you received was, ‘You’re going to have to do the same amount of work here.’ And I remember being so angry,” she said, adding, “Like, you did this. And now I have to do all that work too?’

She explained, “But the truth is they call it ‘the family disease of alcoholism’ and it affects every person in that family system.”

Cassie went on to share how she would eventually learn that she had to work on what she had been through during his progression to alcoholism.

“So I could have chosen not to do the work, but then I have to live with the way I am affected and unhealed. So whether Charles and I were married or not, whether I saw him again for the rest of my life, I still had to process what I had been through,” she explained.

When asked why she finally decided to stay with Kelley and go to work during his recovery, Cassie paused and then brought up their son Ward, and how she just couldn’t bear to be separated from him in his childhood .

“Well, we have a seven-year-old who will be in my house all the time or he will be in a house with his dad half the time where I have no idea what’s going on in that environment,” she said. revealed.

She continued, “And if I wanted to take myself out of his life every single day, it just never would have been this bad — until it just is, which is about where we left Greece.”

The family was on holiday to Greece when Kelley’s alcoholism took a turn for the worse after the pair got into an argument and the musician turned to the bottle for relief.

“I just turned off my phone in the middle of nowhere and just left and kept drinking with all these random people I didn’t know,” he said. ‘We had[ten] in an argument, and I had one of those moments where I thought, ‘I’m so tired of being told what to do.’”

The Georgia native said he woke up the next morning and called his wife, who hadn’t slept since Kelley “disappeared.”

It was that night of drinking that would be his “moment of clarity” that many alcoholics and addicts talk about when they reveal the catalyst moment that propelled them to recovery.

Cassie admitted that at the time she was weighing her options on whether or not to meet with a divorce lawyer. And while it’s still unclear when the holiday took place, Cassie posted a photo of the couple in Mykonos on Instagram last June, according to People.

“The next morning I said, ‘You need help. You have to deal with this,'” Cassie recalls. And he said he knew, and he made a plan with his manager and he flew straight from Greece to treatment. But at that point I really thought I would fly back to the US. I was supposed to meet a divorce lawyer, like, that’s it.’

Kelley celebrated six months of sobriety last January, meaning he’ll hit the one-year milestone in July if he continues on the path he’s been on since that trip to Greece.

As for Charles and Cassie, they celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary in June.

Formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 2006, Lady A has released eight studio albums, most recently What A Song Can Do (2021).

Along the way, the band has won seven Grammy Awards, five CMT Music Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and two Billboard Music Awards, among others.