Throughout her rise to the pinnacle of country music, Lainey Wilson has gone out of her way to publicly credit her family, not just as ardent supporters but as role models.
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Wilson grew up in tiny Baskin, La. —population around 200— with her father Brian Wilson, mother Michelle Wilson and lone sibling, Jenna Wilson Sadler. Her family continued a five-generation family tradition as farmers.
"Daddy is the hardest working person I know. He taught me my entire life how to pull up my bootstraps and tell it like it is with grace, and my mama, too," Lainey told Southern Living in 2022. "My mama's the kindest woman I know ... also knows how to work hard and loves people and loves her family. And, yeah, I'm a Wilson through and through."
As Wilson's become more visible in popular culture, so has her dad, mom and sister. Back in November, the singer-songwriter posted a fun reel on Instagram that shows her whole family exiting a hotel room one-by-one, with each dressed to the nines. Based on the timing and Wilson's all-black outfit, they were heading to the CMA Awards in Nashville, which were held on Nov. 8.
"I'd say the Wilson's clean up pretty good," Wilson wrote in the caption.
At the 2023 CMA Awards, Wilson won Entertainer of the Year for the first time in her still-blossoming career. In her acceptance speech, she reflected on her upbringing while explaining why it's fitting that she won the main prize the year she that tallied nine nominations.
"It's also the year that I wrote my first song," Wilson said of her lucky number. "It's the year that I got my first pair of bell bottoms. It's the year that my mom and daddy brought me to Nashville for the very first time and took me to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. It's the year that my mom and daddy brought home this horse named Tex and the horse was, it was wild and it needed breaking and they put me on the back of that thing and they said 'You better hold on, you better ride.'"
Wilson continued that Tex "prepared me for this ride, because it is wild."
"And I tell you what, there were times where I was crying and I wanted to get down, I'm like, 'Let me off the back of this thing.' But y'all, every time it would start bucking, I'd hold on a little bit tighter," she added.
Read on to meet Wilson's family.
Brian Wilson
Jason Davis/WireImage
Brian Wilson —the Louisiana-based farmer, not the Beach Boy- became a focal point of his daughter's career rise in 2022 after he faced a series of life-threatening health issues, starting that July with a fungal infection caused by diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).
At that year's CMA Awards, Brian was his Lainey's red carpet date. He got a shoutout during his his daughter's Female Vocalist of the Year acceptance speech.
"I was definitely not expecting this at all. I look up to every single one of the ladies in this category. They have all influenced me and inspired me — and I'm so honored just to even be nominated for this. This is huge," Wilson said. "I want to say, a few months ago my daddy got real sick and we thought we were gonna lose him. He spent two months in ICU and he's walking the carpet with me tonight. He's here. This one right here is for my daddy, Brian Wilson. I ain't talking about the Beach Boy, I'm talking about the cowboy! I'm so excited that you're here with me. This is for my family who believed in me before anybody did. And again, the best team in the world and the best fans. I promise you, I know I'm new to a lot of folks, but I won't let y'all down — I promise you."
Brian inspired his daughter's song "Those Boots (Deddy's Song)," which draws from her childhood memories.
"What really sparked the song is, growing up, me and my family, we lived in this uninsulated house, and instead of adding on like a normal person would do, [my parents] bought a portable building and cut out the side of it and attached that thing to the house," Wilson said on "Today's Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen." "So me and my sister were living in the trailer. We'd run in the house. Anyway. I remember every morning, before Deddy would go to work ... I remember he would holler my name and I would run from the portable building into the house, and I would help him pull his blue jeans down over the top of his boots."
Michelle Wilson
Jason Kempin/Getty Images for BMI
Lainey's mother is a longtime school teacher and a graduate of the University of Louisiana- Monroe. Her down-home wisdom inspired the song "Grease."
"It's a saying that my mama used to say all the time, like, 'Now we're cooking with grease. Now we're getting somewhere,'" Lainey explained on "Today's Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen." "I feel like those are little sayings that I cannot escape. Certain things that my family said growing up, it just somehow makes its way into my music. And if you listen to the record, you hear a lot of me talking about Mama, me talking about Daddy, me talking about the Lord. It somehow just makes its way into it, and I just can't even help it ... It's [taken] me a long time to feel [like I'm a grown woman], but I am feeling it."
From the beginning, both parents have supported Lainey's career.
"Any little singing competition around the house, or whatever my mama would take me to, my daddy would pay for us to get there," Lainey told Taste of Country before the 2022 ACM Awards. "Helped me buy my camper trailer whenever I moved to Nashville in 2011. Before anybody else thought I could do it, they did."
Janna Wilson Sadler
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Lainey's close with her older sibling, sharing photos of the two together, including this Facebook post from 2018.
Sadler is an entrepreneur, farmer and mother of two who lives in Louisiana. Per her Instagram profile, she also works in corporate accounting and payroll. She's married to professional rancher Taylor Sadler. Their children are named Knox and Ledger.
Just like mom and dad, Sadler directly influenced one of Lainey's songs. In this case, it's "Two Story House."
"Both looked out the same windows/ Wished on the same stars/ Hung our blue jeans in the same breeze, in the same backyard/ And how can two kids with the same raising/ Wind up on such different pages/ We all got our different callings/ Yeah, I guess that's why they call it/ A two-story house/ A two-story house," the lyrics go.
