Strength in Each Other
Their relationship really went through the wringer after getting engaged. In 2013, the country star was admitted to a Texas hospital for an upper respiratory infection. Mere days later, he suffered a massive stroke. He was given a 1% chance of survival, but Travis’ bride to be was dutifully by his side the entire time.
“Even in his state, his semi-coma state, he squeezed my hand,” Davis told Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY about her husband’s time on life support. “And he laid there, and I just I saw this tear just fell. And it was, you know, one, two at a time. And I just went back to the doctors, and I said, ‘We’re fighting this.”’
Travis endured brain surgery and six months in the hospital after coming out of his coma. The near-fatal stroke had damaged his system. With a ton of help from Davis and physical therapy, he learned to speak and walk again.
It was such a trying time that Travis wrote a new memoir about his experience, “Forever and Ever, Amen: A Memoir of Music, Faith, and Braving the Storms of Life.” The couple was married two years after the stroke in 2015.
The memoir also talks about some of the issues Travis dealt with after the end of his first marriage. The country legend had problems with alcohol abuse and was arrested in 2012 for driving while intoxicated.
“He’s always owned up to his shortcomings and failures, but he has always risen above them, too,” Mary Travis told TODAY. “And he wants the reader to understand that there is mountains and valleys in life.”