You likely know that Blake Shelton moved to Nashville when he was just 17 years old to pursue a country music career, but do you know who pushed him to take the leap?

Shelton was a guest on Q With Tom Power, where he told the intriguing story of how he met teacher and songwriter Mae Boren Axton.

She’s the reason he committed, and he clung to her.

Axton was from Shelton’s hometown of Ada, Okla., and she is one of three writers on Elvis Presley‘s career-defining hit, “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“At one point, they brought her back to Ada to honor her with some award they were gonna give her, and I got to meet her,” Shelton recalls. “I was part of the entertainment for the award that night.”

He was only 16 when he got booked to play that gig.

After he sang, he got to meet Axton and he remembers that “she was just being sweet, you know, she’s like ‘You gotta move to Nashville.'”

“At this point, I think she was like 80 years old.”

Note: Per our math, she would have been close — more likely 77 or 78.

For a young Shelton, this was an earth-shattering comment from a woman who knew what she was talking about.

“Man, hearing somebody who was somebody telling me I need to move to Nashville, I mean, that’s all it took,” he says now.

Then, it happened.

“Two weeks after I graduated high school, I was still 17 years old, I moved to Nashville and I had her phone number and I called her and I said, ‘Mae, I’m in Nashville now, and I’m the guy you met in Ada and you said I should move here,’ and I said, ‘What should I do now?'”

Axton helped him out by pointing him in the right direction. First, she gave him a job … but not in music.

“She said, ‘Well, you’re gonna need a job, and I need somebody to paint my house,'” Shelton continues.

“So my first two weeks in Nashville she hired me to come over, I didn’t know anything about painting, either, I probably did more damage than anything.”

The “Texas” singer was able to meet Mae’s son, singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton.

“Within a day or two he and I had become buddies, and one day he invited me — he was sleeping in his tour bus in his driveway — and one day he invited me on his bus,” the now-star says.

A young and impressionable Shelton said that Hoyt was very kind to him, and that, “He was just telling me stories and he said, ‘Listen to this song,’ and he started tapping on the table and he sang me ‘Ol’ Red.'”

“I was not yet 18 years old and I had already heard, at that point, what would go on to be arguably the most important song I’ve ever recorded.”

What Year Did Blake Shelton’s Song “Ol’ Red” Come Out?

Shelton’s version of “Ol’ Red” dropped in 2002.

The song had been released prior to that, in 1990, by George Jones, and then covered in 1993 by Kenny Rogers.

Shelton’s version is the most popular of the three.

How Many Number One Songs Does Blake Shelton Have?

Shelton has a whopping 30 No. 1 songs on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. As he continues to release new music, expect that number to keep rising.