It’s a sweltering July morning in Nashville, and Haliey Welch has just ordered her first Cuban coffee. Sitting in a booth at the nearly empty Pinewood Social, a usually busy tourist spot overlooking the Cumberland River, she takes a sip of the sugary concoction and makes an exaggerated expression of pleasure, as if she’s just tasted liquid gold. “Chelsea!” she shouts to her friend Chelsea Bradford, who’s a booth away. “You have to try this!”
Since a video of Welch uttering the now immortal sound “hawk tuah” (pronounced it’s true too-a) entered the national consciousness last month, life has been an endless series of firsts, both mundane and scandalous, for the 21-year-old. Originally from Belfast, Tennessee (population 700), she took her first airplane flight, appeared on stage at a stadium concert, reached a million Instagram followers and is now sitting down for her first national interview, with Rolling stone.
It all stems from how she responded to a question about a sex act posed to her by YouTubers Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow late one night in Nashville earlier this summer. “You gotta tell them that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on it!” Welch said on camera, eliciting a guttural spitting noise.
Welch’s response sounds crude and risqué, but the way she delivers it in the video is full of innocence. She’s a fresh-faced, smiling, giggling farm girl who describes oral sex without a hint of sexuality, the way a certain beloved country music legend jokes about her boobs. Though she doesn’t sing or write songs, the “Hawk Tuah Girl,” as she’s known, exudes the charm and magnetism of a Gen Z Dolly Parton.
As she sips coffee and nibbles on breakfast potatoes, two waiters and the restaurant manager stop by the table to assess Welch’s satisfaction. A number of them are visibly excited. RS was in this same restaurant the days when Jack White, members of the Strange things Actors and country stars like the Osborne brothers were in attendance, but the staff was baffled. Later, an older customer stopped Welch and encouraged her: “Keep doing what you’re doing, honey.”
But that raises the question: what exactly does Welch mean? do?
It’s hard to say right now, but two days before our breakfast, Welch was in Fort Lauderdale judging a bikini contest at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. She wore a mask on her Southwest flight to avoid being recognized, but a passenger stopped her because she kept pulling it down to eat cookies on board. While she was waiting for an Uber, a passerby also spotted her. “He kept saying, ‘You’re an 18-year-old girl.’” her“I said, ‘No, I’m not,’ and got in the car.”
Welch says she never wanted all this fame, but she’s determined to turn it into something positive. “Maybe it was a gift from God to me or something,” she says. “Whatever comes of it, it’s going to be something good.”
The first thing you notice about the young woman born Haliey Aliene Welch—“There’s always a ‘lie’ in Haliey,” she jokes as she hands me her birth certificate, which she carries around like a passport—is how small she is. Welch is tiny—really tiny. At 5’3”, she says she looked like “a chopstick” when she stood next to Shaquille O’Neal for a recent photo, and her petite frame plays into one of her biggest fears: being kidnapped.
“I’m paranoid about it,” she said. “If I’m in a big crowd, I look around to see who’s around me. You have to behave that way these days, or they’ll pick you up, throw you in a van and you’re gone.”
Since she became famous, Welch has been a star. Today, she has three team members (a manager, a publicist and a videographer) with her, as well as her best friend Bradford, who was by her side when she first launched “hawk tuah.” After quitting her job at a factory that makes the springs used to dispense bags of chips in vending machines, she hired a lawyer on the recommendation of another friend’s mother. Then she joined the management company The Penthouse (their motto is “Protect the hawk from the vultures”) and got the same powerful ad agency that has represented Bruce Springsteen for decades. (When I point this out to Welch, she stops eating to ask, “Who’s that?” but lights up with recognition when she learns that her publicist also represents the country singer Justin Moore.)
It’s hard for Welch to explain exactly how she wants to turn her fame into a career. When pressed for specifics, she says she enjoys podcasting and has a vague idea of doing something in comedy, but hasn’t pursued it any further than that. “I can see it going that way,” she says. According to Welch’s publicist, the company has signed on to help field Welch’s many requests for interviews and appearances to figure out “what will best support her and her story and what she wants to do in the future in comedy and philanthropy.”
Brittany Bell*
“I want to do something that really matters and makes a difference,” Welch says. “That’s what the world needs.”
Today, that means helping animals. After breakfast, she and Bradford head to PetSmart to buy groceries to donate to the local pound. Welch is an avid animal lover, and back in Belfast, where last weekend she was tending a sprawling garden of kale, carrots and potatoes, she has a miniature mare named Ellie and a horse named Remmy Jane, but she avoids cats. “They always run away — or get run over,” she sighs.
Welch knows how to deliver a punchline, and over breakfast she delivers funny, no-nonsense observations with the same ease and charm that she delivered the most famous blowjob joke of the year.
“I think the world needed a laugh,” Bradford said when asked to explain her friend’s appeal. “Haliey was able to make everyone laugh together.”
When Welch begins to share bits of her story, it gives clues to why she relies on humor. Welch was raised by her paternal grandmother from the age of nine months and still lives with her today. She sees her father, a farmhand, fairly regularly, but says she has no contact with her mother. “I never had anything to do with her,” Welch says.
She shows off a tattoo she got last winter on her right ribcage that reads, “Still I Rise.” “After everything I’ve been through? I still rise,” she says.
Welch deleted her social media accounts six months ago, long before she became famous online, for “personal reasons, like mental health,” she says, but reactivated them after the viral video, in part to shut down copycat accounts. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she says. “These people are making money off of me and they’re not even me!”
Welch has also done her part of the loot. According to reports, she has sold at least $65,000 worth of official merchandise and will earn upwards of $30,000 for an appearance this weekend on Long Island. (Her manager, Jonnie Forester, declined to say how much a Welch appearance would bring in, but estimates it’s “enough to feed her horse and dog for the rest of their lives.”)
And the copycats are only part of the battle. She’s also been the target of various vitriolic attacks online, and only recently, on Shaq’s advice, has she stopped reading the comments, some of which are political in nature. One user called her a “Trumptard.” “I don’t even know what that means,” she says.
Through no fault of her own, Welch found herself in the political crosshairs after playing a light-hearted game of “hot or not” on Brianna LaPaglia’s show. Bri Plan Podcast. Morgan Wallen was deemed worthy of the “hawk,” but former President Donald Trump, 78, was not. Some cast this as Welch taking a stance against the presidential candidate.
“I don’t want to be in the middle of this. Whoever you want for president, that’s your business. What do I think of you?” Welch said. “And I was talking about appearance. Donald Trump, I’m sure you’re a nice man, but you’re not getting the same thing.” falcon of me. He is old enough to be my grandfather.
In fact, few people are chosen to hear Welch’s catchphrase. While she did utter it at Zach Bryan’s show, she says she never once uttered it while judging a bikini contest in Fort Lauderdale and prefers to keep the two words to herself so they don’t lose their luster — though some days she wishes she had said them.
“I don’t like attention and now I’m getting it,” she said. “I can’t even walk into a Walmart without someone coming up to me and asking, ‘Are you her?’”
“They all think they know a lot about me,” she continues, “but no one knows anything about me.”
“Do you want them to do it?” I ask.
Welch flashes a sly smile. “Don’t worry. They’ll do it before this is over.”