“I’ve always felt as if I quit something when I left the military,” Craig Morgan wrote in a 2023 essay for GovX, a website for service members. “In fact, it may have been the only thing I have ever quit.”
That feeling stayed with him for a long time. Veterans Day is Wednesday, and the Tennessee singer has a big Saturday in Nashville first. On the morning of Nov. 7 he hosts his first Veterans Day 5K, which helps groups including the USO. That night he headlines the Ryman Auditorium.
If you know Craig from the radio, he’s the man behind “That’s What I Love About Sunday,” which spent four weeks at No. 1. Before the hits, he was a soldier. He joined the Army in 1985, back when the recruiting slogan was “Be All You Can Be.” He served with the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and made staff sergeant.
Then music took over his calendar. “I left because the world of my music had gotten so busy that I felt like it wasn’t fair to everyone involved,” he told AARP in 2024.
By then he had 17 1/2 years in the Army and Army Reserve. A military retirement takes 20. When his enlistment ran out, he simply went home. The one piece of paper he wanted never came.
“Even at 17 and a half, I never got a letter that said, ‘Thank you for your 17 and a half years of service,'” he told AARP. “I always regretted not having that letter from the government saying that I served my country for 20 years.”
He never stopped thinking of himself as a soldier, either. “For me, I have never quit being a soldier,” he told Fox News Digital in October 2023.
In 2023, the Army brought back “Be All You Can Be,” the same slogan from the year he first signed up. “So, when they said they were coming back with it, I felt like I had a lot to offer,” he said at an Army ceremony in Alabama the next year.
When the day came to go back in, he did it on a Saturday night in Nashville.
On Saturday night, July 29, 2023, Craig was on the bill at the Grand Ole Opry, the show he has belonged to as a member since 2008. The sold-out crowd came for songs and got an Army ceremony too. Craig stood in front of an American flag on the Opry stage, raised his right hand and took the oath to join the U.S. Army Reserve.
He was 59, just 12 days past his birthday. Nobody in the audience knew it was coming. Afterward he came back out in his Army uniform and sang his song “Soldier.”
“I think it felt even more rewarding now than it did the first time,” he told Fox News Digital.
A fan on their first trip to the Opry filmed the moment from the seats. This is a fan upload, not an official Opry video.
Craig Morgan takes the oath on the Opry stage (fan video)
He has kept climbing since then. In February 2024, at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, he became a warrant officer and an associate bandmaster with the 313th Army Band. Asked how long he planned to stay, he said “till they make me leave; as long as I am having a positive impact on the Army mission, I’ll be here.” On Jan. 15, 2026, in a ceremony at the Pentagon, he was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 2.
After the Opry night, Craig called in to the Big D and Bubba radio show to talk about it in his own words.
Craig tells radio hosts Big D and Bubba about re-enlisting on the Opry stage
Saturday’s 5K is set for the Grand Ole Opry House, the Opry’s home in Nashville. A few hours later he plays the Ryman. This time, the crowd will know he’s a soldier before he sings a note.