Keith Urban tells: My second chance

He is winning hearts across the nation, but family is everything to country music sex symbol Keith, who feels blessed to have a second chance after nearly losing his beautiful voice.

As Keith Urban says himself, he has come a long way from his humble upbringing in Caboolture, a tiny blue-collar town north of Brisbane, where he started playing guitar when he was six years old. Keith, 44, may have found a whole new generation of fans with his sensitive and heart-warming performance on Nine’s The Voice, but it was this quiet superstar’s induction into the Grand Ole Opry family two weeks ago that had him jumping for joy.

“Thank you very much: Yee haw! That is awesome!” he told fans around the world after performing his hits Days Go By and Without You – and showing his seductive voice had lost none of its charm despite a frightening recent throat operation. He thanked his parents Bob and Marienne, who “got me into country music and drove me around to all the gigs”, his wife Nicole Kidman, and his daughters Sunday Rose, 3, and 15-month old Faith – but reserved his biggest thanks for his fans.

“It’s a long way from Caboolture to the stage here at the Grand Ole Opry… and to stand in this circle is the most phenomenal thing,” he says. “This opportunity for me is a way to say they [his fans] don’t know how much they mean to me. It”s such a long journey for me to get to this stage.” The four-time Grammy winner wants to be seen as a trailblazer for internationally-born country music singers, but until recently, he feared he may never again sing live, after surgery in November to remove a polyp on his vocal cords.

Nicole wept when she heard Keith’s voice for the first time following a three-week silence after the risky operation, telling W magazine that her handsome husband is her biggest protector. “My husband says I’m raw,” she reveals. “He thinks the world is not a great place for me because he fears that I’ll be hurt. He says, ‘That’s my job: I’ll protect you’.”