It wasn’t his time. Last year, Colt Ford suffered a serious heart attack after a sold-out show at the Gilbert, Arizona, location of Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row. The country rapper was rushed to Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, Arizona, where he was considered to be in critical condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Weeks after the medical emergency, the 54-year-old spoke publicly for the first time on the Big D & Bubba Show, detailing the scary event and revealing that he was declared clinically dead three times before being stabilized: “It’s just been a traumatic, crazy experience, guys. I don’t even remember coming out here to do a show in Phoenix. I died three times. Luckily, my band came out to check on me…they came out to check on me, and then all of a sudden they were like, ‘Oh God,’ and then that is when all hell broke loose.” This Mayo Clinic out here in Phoenix, if it was going to happen, God could not have had me in a better place. The big doc out here said, ‘I wouldn’t give me 1%, but I give you 0.1% that you’d survive.’ They brought me back. They saved my life. The Lord had more for me to do.” Luckily Colt made it through after 20 hours or surgery, and even returned to the road in 2025, just a year after the near-fatal heart attack. But Colt admits that it was strange to get back out there. During an interview on the Try That In A Small Town podcast, the “Dirt Road Anthem” co-writer opened up on what it’s like to be on the road again after a traumatic event like that: “Now I’ve got crazy anxiety and nerves. I’ve never had that before. So it’s been an ongoing process that’s a lot to deal with. The first time I went to get back on the bus I started to step on it and I was like, ‘Wait, oh, last time I was on here y’all carried me off here dead.’ So a lot of things like that you don’t think about until they’re back in the situation. I don’t even sit where I used to sit in my bus anymore because that’s where I was sitting when it happened.” And he also recalled the first time he woke up after clinically dying – and what he saw while he was gone. As it turns out, the last thing Colt saw before he finally woke up was his good friend Toby Keith, stepping out of a bright light with a message for him: “He used to call me Little Dog Daddy. You know, for most people you’d go, ‘I don’t want to be Little Dog.’… But it’s freaking Toby, so you’re like, yeah, he feels like a superhero. And I woke up by, literally, a light bright as it could be, and Toby stepped out and said, ‘They’re not ready for you, Little Dog, you need to go on back down there.'” When Toby Keith tells you they’re not ready for you, you listen. It’s nothing short of a miracle that Colt has been able to make the recovery that he has, and it’s great to see him back out on the road so soon. Though I’m sure there was a part of him that was no doubt happy that he was able to reunite with his old friend, even if was just for a second. The post Colt Ford Says He Saw Toby Keith Right Before Waking Up From A Coma After His Heart Attack: “They’re Not Ready For You” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.