Country music star, wife were nearly mauled by grizzly bear

Country music star Tyler Rich told Taste of Country recently that he and his wife, actress Sabina Gabecki, narrowly dodged being mauled by a Grizzly bear while celebrating their anniversary with a vacation trip to Yellowstone.

“We went down (to) Yellowstone and went on a couple hikes and stuff,” Rich said. “We were seconds away from being mauled by a grizzly bear.

“It was pretty cool.”

Good chance he would not have been saying that had the bear been able to make up those few seconds.

“We were alone, on ATVs and literally like 20 years in front of us was a Volkswagen-sized grizzly and her two cubs and I just froze.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he added. “I had like 20 ideas.”

A good idea might have been to fire up that ATV engine and head in the opposite direction, but Rich said it kind of took care of itself.

“But in that moment, you are just like, humbled,” he said. “She like ran away from us, but the trail we had to keep going on on the ATV trail literally where they were just running.”

Rich said he told his wife what kind of danger they were in after.

“I was like, ‘A mom grizzly bear that thinks her cubs are threatened is the number one apex predator on the Earth,’” he said.

Rich told Taste of Country that protecting his wife might have been a romantic way to die.

“She actually said something like that, she said, ‘You know, it might have been a sweet ending.’

“I obviously would have just ran straight at the bear so she could get away,” he added. “And she was like, ‘No, I would run at the bear.’”