Stephen Colbert pays tribute to Toby Keith: What to know about their unlikely friendship

Late night host Stephen Colbert paid an emotional tribute to Oklahoma country music star Toby Keith Tuesday on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

Keith died late Monday after a multiyear battle with stomach cancer. He was 62.

In the five-minute segment titled "Forever Grateful for Toby Keith," the 10-time Primetime Emmy Award winner recalled his unlikely friendship with the sometimes polarizing country music icon.

"I was shocked and saddened when I saw the news. ... I knew Toby was ill, and he'd been fighting stomach cancer for some time. But I still had hope that we'd see each other again, and that we would hear him on this stage, because I was lucky enough to become friends with Toby over the years — as improbable as that seems," Colbert said on the segment.

He recalled first meeting Keith when the music star was a guest on his satirical 2005-2014 Comedy Central series "The Colbert Report" and having an impression of who the Oklahoma native was based on his hit song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)."

"Back then, there was a not-so-helpful legend that I had knives out for some of my guests, and it didn't help that at the beginning I sometimes did. And I remember having some kind of plan for Toby, I think related to his boot-in-your-ass song. But right before I went onstage, I remember vividly looking down at my shoes and saying, 'What are you doing? You're a host; he's your guest. Make him feel welcome. See who he is.' And what do you know: We hit it off like a house afire. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed talking to Toby Keith," Colbert recalled.

"Evidently, Toby had a good time, too, because after the show, I was headed to a post-mortem meeting, and he was coming out of his green room. And those rooms are on the same hallway. And as he was heading for the door that goes out on the 54th street, he turned and caught my eye and said, 'Hey, man. You do a great job: Whatever the (expletive) it is you do.' I took that as the greatest compliment."

Colbert said he liked Keith's comment so much that his head writer on "The Colbert Report," Allison Silverman, had it stitched on a small throw pillow. The studio audience laughed, cheered and applauded when Colbert produced the pillow, with the f-word blurred out.

"It has been in my office ever since," Colbert said.

Late-night host helped induct Toby Keith into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015

It was the same story Colbert told in 2015 when he made a surprise appearance at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony to usher Keith into the hallowed hall.

Keith talked with The Oklahoman about his unlikely friendship with Colbert in a 2015 interview shortly after his Songwriters Hall of Fame induction.

“It’s just one of those really weird relationships that you stumble into once in a while where they work for all the wrong reasons, and it turned out for all the right reasons,” Keith said.

“I just sit back and smile because believe it or not, he’s the last person I thought would have got it, but he gets it."

The Norman resident told The Oklahoman then that he was aware of the cartoonish way his detractors often viewed him: as a simpleminded, flag-waving right-winger who only writes drinking songs and jingoist military anthems.

“I’ll have real liberal people come up to me and say, ‘You’re my favorite Republican,’ and I’m thinking, ‘You didn’t do your homework, Jack.’ I’m not a political guy, I just support the troops. I come from a long line of Democrats. I’m one of the first non-Democrats in our family and I’m an Independent. … I try to pick the guy that I think’ll do the best job; I don’t care how they’re affiliated,” Keith said.

“He (Colbert) is really the only guy out there that did the homework and got it on his own, not just assuming that everything was normal and my world is as I’m painted in the media. And I don’t go out and fight it, you know. I let people call me what they want ‘cause I’m my own guy. I’m my own man. And you can’t go out and argue every time; you can’t go try to put out every fire or build every ship, so I just say, ‘Hey, you know, paint me with whatever brush you wanna paint me. I don’t care.'”

Stephen Colbert says country star taught him 'not to judge people too quickly'

When Colbert took over CBS' "The Late Show" from David Letterman in 2015, Keith was a musical guest in the first week, performing his breezy song “Rum Is the Reason,” from his album “35 MPH Town."

When Keith made that 2015 appearance on the fledgling "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," the music icon gifted the host with a custom guitar to wish him luck and congratulate him on his new gig.

Colbert showed the guitar on Tuesday's memorial segment and said his son plays it now.

"And I hope he'll think of Toby when he does," Colbert added.

The late-night host praised Keith as "a man who rose from Oklahoma's oil fields, where he worked on a rig, and the state's football fields, where he was a semiprofessional defensive end, to become one of the most consistent hitmakers in country music for more than three decades: 20 Billboard No. 1 songs, 42 Top 10 hits and rooms full of platinum and gold albums."

"Toby was a great performer, unapologetically patriotic, opinionated, brash, often controversial, but resonating with legions of fans by writing their lives in a very real and entertaining way. So, we had him on a lot. He was always fun. He was in my Christmas special back in 2008," Colbert said.

He called it "one of my greatest honors" to induct Keith into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, where he got to sing the entertainer's hit "As Good as I Once Was," which Colbert called "a song I used to listen to every night before going on stage."

"I think he enjoyed how unlikely a pair we seemed. I sure did — you know, like when people are excited when a duck and a horse are friends. For the record, I was the duck," Colbert said, drawing more laughs from the studio audience.

He vowed to remember an important lesson from his friendship with Keith.

"Toby was always surprising people. You would think you'd know who Toby Keith was, and then you're watching Obama's Nobel (Prize) acceptance speech, and there's Toby Keith giving him a standing ovation. Toby, what are you doing this time?" Colbert said.

"Toby taught me not to judge people too quickly, and with his passing, I'm going to try to remember that again. It's something we all need to remember, because I'm sure Toby and I disagreed about many things — as so many Americans do these days. More and more of us are angrier and angrier with each other."

Colbert became visibly emotional by the end of the segment, which he ended with an invitation to the audience.

"I do not care who you are, I will meet you at this place: I will meet you at being brokenhearted that Toby Keith is gone. Thank you, Big Dog," Colbert finished.

"The Late Show" house band played the show to commercial with a soulful rendition of "As Good as I Once Was."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Stephen Colbert bids emotional farewell to unlikely friend Toby Keith