Willie Nelson is looking pretty spry to be 180 years old. Wait, what? It turns out that the Red-Headed Stranger celebrates two birthdays every year.
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No, Nelson wasn’t born on Leap Year or some other coincidence like that. It all comes down to business hours at the county courthouse when Nelson was born. The singer was born in Abbott, Texas in 1933 on April 29.
However, he had been born just before midnight. As a result, the county clerk wasn’t around until the next day to actually file the paperwork for Nelson’s birth. The country singer was marked as being born on April 30th, which is technically an inaccuracy.
But the ever-chill Nelson just rolled with it. In an interview with SiriusXM, Nelson said he just celebrates both birthdays. He said, “I was born before midnight on the 29th but it didn’t get registered in the county courthouse until the next day, the 30th. So, it went out officially as the 30th. So I just do both days.”
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Willie Nelson Didn’t Realize for Years
However, Nelson didn’t know about the error for years. The singer always celebrated his birthday on April 29 for the first 18 years of his life. According to his daughter Lana, it took joining the Armed Forces for Nelson to realize he had two birthdays.
Nelson thought he had just been mistaken and swapped to April 30.
“Dad celebrated his birthday on the 29th of April until he was 18 years old and went into the Air Force. He had to finally get a birth certificate and it said he was born on the 30th. Not to argue with the government we celebrated his birthday on the 30th for about 40 years,” she said.
It took a visit by one of Nelson’s cousins for the entire thing to come to light.
She continued, “One day while visiting with his cousin, who was there the night he was born, Mildred said no, he WAS in fact born a few minutes before midnight on the 29th and Dr. Simms didn’t record the birth until after midnight. As it turns out we get TWO days to shower Dad with love and tell him how much he means to us.”
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[Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images]
