Chely Wright Comes Clean, Couldn't Be Happier

Chely Wright has been fessing up to a lot of things lately, namely that she is gay and carried on relationships with men to be accepted in the country music world. So Wright had no problem telling Imus, “Of course I do!” when he asked if, like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, she plays softball. 

Her new book is a memoir entitled Like Me, which Wright described as a “very personal” story of her life. In it, she explains how she balanced—and is still balancing—the delicate task of being a country music star and a lesbian at the same time.

“I knew I was different when I was about five,” said Wright, who grew up in Wellsville Kansas. “A hotbed of liberalism,” she joked.

“I thought I was an alien, I thought I had a birth defect, I thought I was going to hell,” Wright said of knowing she was somehow not like the other girls. “It was hard.”

She realized her dream of being a country singer before she knew she was gay, declaring to her entire hometown at age four that she was going to be a country star. “I admired folks like Conway Twitty, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn,” said Wright.

As she established herself in the world of country music and became a very public person, Wright did everything she could to bury her private life, which meant sabotaging her decade-long relationship with a woman. When they broke up, she dated Brad Paisley, one of country’s leading male performers.

“I had no business being in a relationship with a man at any time in my life,” she told Imus. When she dated Brad, she knew there was zero change she would ever become straight. “At that point, I was just trying to settle. That’s a horrible thing to say about such an amazing guy like Brad Paisley.”

But the two had fun together, touring, writing music, and producing records. “I knew I couldn’t go date other women, so I thought, okay, I’ll just settle, and I won’t have complete love and fulfillment in my life,” said Wright.

Before she came out a few weeks ago, there had never before been an openly gay country music star, something her friend John Rich made sure to remind her of not long ago.

“In 2005 he asked me, ‘Are you gay? People say you’re gay,” she recalled. He went on to tell her the rumors were damaging her career, and that being gay was “disgusting” and “perverted.” So, she lied, telling Rich she was not gay. His reply? “Thank God.”

The response to Wright’s announcement has been mixed. “I’ve gotten so many amazing phone calls, and e-mails, and letters,” she said. There has also been some backlash, which Wright witnessed just yesterday as a guest on a country music radio station in Modesto, California. “We got a couple of nasty phone calls while I was there,” she said, but was happy the station followed through with the interview anyway.

Most important, at this time in her life, right now, Wright is happy. Maybe some of that good cheer will rub off on the I-Man.

-Julie Kanfer