Country star Darius Rucker opened up about getting a divorce from his ex-wife, Beth Leonard Rucker, after 20 years of marriage — and said that generally, “you feel like a failure.”
The 57-year-old country singer spoke to People magazine about fatherhood and coparenting their grown kids (18-year-old son Jack and 22-year-old daughter Daniella) after the couple announced their split in 2020, promising at the time to be “close friends and parenting partners.”
“You try to express those feelings, and it’s hard to say and it’s hard to put that on paper,” Rucker said. “You try to do it as real as you can. I’m not a big talk-to-you guy, but I can sit down and write a song about it.”
While three years later he said the two are not “officially divorced” yet, they are still a family and always will be.
The Hootie and the Blowfish member got candid about how he’s felt since his 2020 split from wife Beth Leonard.https://t.co/8Q0aM3fT23
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 8, 2023
“That stuff hurts and you feel like a failure,” the “Wagon Wheel” hitmaker said of the end of his marriage. “But we’re still a family, a piece of paper is not going to change that.”
“We’re still a family, and that’s all because Beth is awesome,” he added. “She knows it’s the best for the kids, and she’s a great human being.”
For the country star, he said it’s about being there for his kids — the way his own dad wasn’t when he was younger.
“It was tough growing up without a dad,” Rucker said.”I hated it. I had a lot of great father figures in my life, but not having him there was s***ty, and I don’t ever want my kids to not know where their dad is or how they can get in touch with him, because I never knew how to get in touch with mine.”
“With a job like mine, you travel a lot, but the one thing is, [my children] always know where I am,” he added.”I think that’s directly from the fact that I never knew where [my father] was.”
Rucker and Beth tied the knot in 2000 and welcomed their children in 2001 and in 2005. The singer also has a daughter Carolyn, 28, from a previous relationship.
Related: Darius Rucker Says He’s Grateful He Gets To Do What He Loves, But Admits There’s A Downside