Riley Green has had a pretty good run.
The Alabama country singer was born Oct. 18, 1988, and grew up in Jacksonville, Alabama. He played quarterback at Jacksonville State University before music took over his life. In 2019 his song “There Was This Girl” went all the way to No. 1 on country radio, and the ACMs named him New Male Artist of the Year. This fall he’s a coach on NBC’s “The Voice” for Season 30, alongside Kelly Clarkson, Adam Levine and Queen Latifah.
So you’d figure the thing he’s proudest of would be a trophy or a hit record.
You’d be wrong.
On a popular podcast this summer, Riley was asked what he feels proudest of. His answer started by ruling out the obvious. “Like for me, it’s not musical achievements,” he said.
Then he turned to the land. “For me, I feel proud about my farm.” He’s built his Alabama farm up a piece at a time, and he put it at 1,780 acres “that all touches.” For a kid who grew up in Jacksonville, that’s a lot of home.
Country Living magazine filmed a short clip with him on that farm in September, so you can see the place he’s talking about for yourself.
A quick look at Riley’s Alabama farm
The farm was only part of his answer, though. The part that stands out is about the two people who raised him.
Riley’s dad was a carpenter who built houses. His mom was a schoolteacher. Good, steady jobs, and neither one came with a star’s paycheck.
So when the music started paying off, Riley took care of them.
“I feel proud that I, you know, could put my parents in a nice house and buy my dad a truck,” he said.
Taste of Country reported that he bought his parents a home so they don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage. Think about that for a second. The son of a man who spent his life building houses for other people got to hand his folks a house of their own.
And Riley says that feels better than any of his own toys. “I feel more for that than anything I’ve ever bought myself, you know,” he said, “and like my niece and nephew sending me pictures, my sister, of them catching fish in my lake.”
Family kids, his land, a fish on the line. You can tell those pictures mean the world to him.
“And that those are things that I know will last forever,” he added.
He feels the same way about his fans. Riley said hearing a crowd sing back a song he wrote hits him harder than any award. “There’s emotion in it, like that means more to me than an award.”
If you’d like more of Riley in his own words, he sat down for a full interview with Audacy’s “Katie & Company,” and it’s a good way to get to know the man behind the hits.
Riley sits down for a longer interview
Plenty of stars talk about family in interviews. Riley went out and put his folks in a house, and when he was asked what makes him proudest, that’s what he talked about instead of the hits.