Daughter Krystal Keith to accept the late Toby Keith's honorary degree at OU commencement

NORMAN — Fifteen years after she graduated from the University of Oklahoma, Krystal Keith will be back at her alma mater's commencement ceremonies this weekend to accept a special degree.

The 2009 OU alumnus will stand in for her father, the late country music superstar Toby Keith, as an honorary degree is posthumously awarded to him during the Norman university's 9 a.m. Saturday, May 11 commencement ceremony.

A well-known Sooners superfan, Keith died Feb. 5 at the age of 62 after a multi-year battle with stomach cancer.

A singer-songwriter and Norman resident like her father, Krystal Keith will share her remembrances of her father’s love for OU during the ceremony.

"His passion started as far back as when he was 12 and 13 years old and worked in the stadium selling Cokes just so he could see the games," she said in a statement. "For as long as I can remember, he took us to every bowl game no matter what his work schedule was. And he was on the sidelines of nearly all the different OU sporting events. He bled Crimson and Cream.”

Toby Keith knew about OU honorary degree before he died

Along with Keith, OU will award honorary degrees this weekend to Atlanta resident Barbara Ann Posey Jones, a distinguished educator, economist and civil rights activist; the late Tom Love, the founder of Love’s Travel Stops, who died in March; and Dallas-based Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient David Proctor, renowned for his work on the Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 space missions.

OU will confer the degrees for Love and Jones during the commencement ceremony scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, May 10. Keith and Proctor will be recognized during the May 11 ceremony. Both events will take place at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman.

Born Toby Keith Covel, the Songwriters Hall of Famer was honored to learn last year that OU would be presenting him with the honorary degree at this spring's commencement, according to his publicist.

Keith, who also will be inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, was looking forward to walking the OU stage, but succumbed to cancer before he had the chance.

Although he didn't attend college, Toby Keith sent his children to OU

Born in Clinton, Toby Keith grew up in Moore from the time he was in middle school and became a diehard Sooners fan at a young age.

But he didn't attend college: He worked as a rodeo hand during high school and in nearby oil fields after graduation. After the oil market crashed, he played semiprofessional football for the now-defunct Oklahoma City Drillers.

In 1984, Keith made music his full-time job, playing Oklahoma and Texas honky tonks with his Easy Money Band. Less than a decade later, he scored a No. 1 hit with his debut country single, 1993's "Should've Been a Cowboy."

But he was determined that his own children would go to college. Toby Keith's three children — his daughters Shelley Covel Rowland and Krystal Keith and his son Stelen Covel — are OU alumni.

“I'm basically a female version of my dad. I am completely ornery and … I'm girl enough that my dad still doesn't understand me all the time. But I'm enough of a hard-core, edgy personality that we mesh really well together,” Krystal Keith told The Oklahoman in a 2013 interview.

“The only knock-down-drag-out we ever had was over college."

In 2004, Krystal Keith was still a teenager when she and her dad released a duet cover of “Mockingbird" that reached the Top 40 on the Hot Country Songs charts. They even performed it live at the 38th Annual Country Music Association Awards.

“After high school, I was like ‘Nashville, here I come.' And he was like, ‘No, I said college.' I was like, ‘No you didn't. You just said graduation,' and he's like ‘college graduation,'” Krystal Keith told The Oklahoman in 2013.

"He definitely knew what he was doing. I can't tell you how immensely important the experience of college was on my life.”

After graduating from OU, she released two EPs — 2013's "Krystal Keith" and 2018's "Boulder" — along with her 2013 debut full-length album, "Whiskey & Lace," on her father's Show Dog Nashville label, before shifting her focus to raising her two young daughters.

She scored a viral hit in 2013 with her emotional ballad “Daddy Dance with Me," which she co-wrote for the daddy-daughter dance at her wedding to Drew Sandubrae.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: The late Toby Keith's daughter to accept his honorary degree from OU