A year ago Haliey Welch went to Nashville to party during CMA Fest and left with a nickname she might never shed

Yahoo

11-06-2025

On the evening of June 9, 2024, Haliey Welch and her BFF Chelsea Bradford headed to downtown Nashville to party it up at CMA Fest. The night started with some free outdoor concerts, then Megan Moroney on the Riverfront stage, while enjoying a few blue vodka slushies.
Little did she know that night would change her life forever.
On Lower Broadway that hot summer night, Welch cemented in stone a nickname she might never shake. After a YouTuber posted a few of the videos he shot that night, Welch became known as the "Hawk Tuah Girl" for a comment she made that went viral, racking up millions of views online.
"They started asking us normal questions like 'What makes you wife material?' Of course Chelsea pushed me forward and said 'She's got a better answer for you than I do,' and I just answered being goofy," Welch told The Tennessean of that night.
On June 11, 2024, Welch woke up internet famous — whether she liked it or not. What would follow would be mind blowing to the 21-year old from Belfast, Tennessee.
What's she's doing next with her internet fame might surprise you.
We caught up with Welch near her home in rural Middle Tennessee to talk about the whirlwind she's experienced over the last year. There have been highs (getting to meet Shaquille O'Neal and buying her "Granny" a convertible for Christmas) and there have been lows (being the face of a failed crypto currency.)
Welch thought she and her friend just had an innocent night of "boozing it up pretty good," on Broadway until a few days later when her friends' text thread alerted her that a video from that night had posted online.
" It had a good bit of likes, but it wasn't nothing bad," she remembers. "It was like 70,000, so I was like, 'Nobody's gonna see that.' But then it grew. It just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And by the time I left work that day, it was already like millions of views. So I was like, 'Okay, that's a little nerve wracking.'"
The YouTuber posted more videos from that night. The likes kept coming.
"I was like, 'This is horrifying.' Then I seen how big the views had gotten, so it started freaking me out. It's a lot to take in, so I locked myself in my bedroom for a little while as we all would have."
After the shock and horror of the virality of her comment, Welch aligned herself with a manager and an attorney who would guide her life across the next year and help her navigate everything that would come her way.
" I would be the one person that got caught on camera saying something that everybody just found funny," Welch says.
Was it a bad thing? At first yes. Now, not so much.
"I don't think it's a bad thing anymore. I think it's something that happened for a reason and I was put there at that place for a good reason. God had intentions behind it, so I can't be mad about it. I feel like he's had bigger plans for me than what I was doing. I was just working in a factory and minding my own business and going home after work and now I can do all sorts of cool stuff."
In addition to meeting O'Neal, Wiz Khalifa and others, Welch got on an airplane for the first time in her life. She left the country for the first time. She got to take her friends to Hawaii. She started a podcast called "Talk Tuah."
"I've gotten to do a lot of things. I get to provide for my family now. I get to do so many different things that I was not able to this time last year. It's just great."
In late 2024, Welch's name was associated with a meme coin called $HAWK. In December, the opportunity turned into a scandal that had Welch's name all over it. There were allegations that the meme coin was created as a "rug pull" scam, which is when creators hype a crypto currency to inflate its value before it plummets and creators pocket the money. Upon its launch, $HAWK initially rose in value — peaking at $490 million, according to Forbes — before plummeting, costing investors lots of money.
Legal action was taken against the developers of the $HAWK meme coin. Investors filed a lawsuit alleging violations of federal securities laws, leading to the FBI and the SEC asking to see Welch's cell phone to assist in the investigation, which was later returned with no evidence that Welch was involved in the scandal outside of her name being used to brand it.
Welch's attorney, Nashville-based Christian Barker told The Tennessean Welch has and continues to take this matter very seriously.
"She's cooperated in every way requested by the FBI, SEC, and CFTC, none of which have indicated in any way that she's done anything wrong," Barker said. "At the end of the day, if an influencer endorsed a certain brand of cosmetics, and those cosmetics infected a lot of consumers' eyes, you wouldn't blame the celebrity that was in the makeup commercial — you would blame the makeup company. This is no different as she was just a sponsor/endorser, not the creator. Was it horrible — yes. Was she at fault — no."
Backstory: Haliey Welch aka the 'Hawk Tuah' girl learns firsthand what it means to go viral
Welch said she's learned from this experience not to get involved in things she doesn't fully understand. The worst part of it all, she says, is knowing people who trusted her lost money.
"That's the part that really upset me," she said. "I don't care about my reputation getting damaged, but you've got to think about all these people. That are in spots that you used to be in. And then they go to work every week and they do good having $300 left out of their check and they put that in on a coin because they trust you. And then they lost every bit of that money. It's, it's something I don't wish on anybody. I was in that place last year, so I know what it's like to lose $300. It's not easy. I will say that's almost my whole car payment, so I get it."
Welch was given a nickname she didn't expect to be branded with. She did something silly one drunken night, but she never envisioned it would become her new identity. While she's OK with the nickname, she wants people to know there's more to her than a gimmick.
"I want to be known as Haliey. 'Hawk Tuah' is what defined me and that's how I got here, but that's not who I am. And I thought about getting away from it when we first started doing this. I don't want to be known for that. I mean, that's part of me, but I don't want that to be my whole schtick. There's more to me than just 'Hawk Tuah.'"
During 2024, Welch founded her charity, Paws Across America to help provide funding for animal shelters. To date, Paws has contributed upwards of $100,000 to animal causes across the country.
" I have pure intentions and I'm caring," Welch said when asked what someone might not know about her. "I try to care about people and I'm trying to help more animals. That's something I'm really interested in. Paws Across America is my charity that we started and I donate out of it to animal shelters when I go and visit to them, like if they have like a list of supplies they're running low on, if they need dog food or anything like that, or even just help with their shelter in general, we just donate money to them."
Welch is also working on a partnership with the Nashville-area mental health organization, Onsite, she's rebranding her podcast and a documentary about her life is in the works.
Of all the opportunities Welch has had in the last year including getting on stage with Zach Bryan, throwing out a first pitch at a New York Mets game and taking her friends to Hawaii for the first time, her favorite moment is a simple one.
"I got my granny a Volkswagen for Christmas — a convertible — and then I've been waiting for when it's going to get warm out for her to let the top down. She pulled up my house the other day with her top down and her hair blowing in the wind. I was like, you know what? You make it all worth it."
Melonee Hurt covers music and music business at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee. Reach Melonee at [e-mail] or on Instagram at @MelHurtWrites.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Haliey Welch's lessons after 'Hawk Tuah Girl': What she's doing now