Folk music is in the great "Collective Unconscious". If you are from a country, you have heard folk music and identified it whether you were aware of it as a distinct from of expression or not. You can't have avoided it. The "epiphany" may be when you have recognized it as a distinct entity.

I grew up listening to Leadbelly, Josh White and Burl Ives but I heard my step-father sing a folk blues that he learned in Tennessee.
"Things may look good here but they're better on down the line" (Tennessee Blues)

Epiphany for me was recognition (Oh that's what that is!)

I was bequeathed a 1927 edition of "American Songbag" by Carl Sandburg through my
biological father who died before I was born. This was a legacy of sorts. It became a musical bible for me. The epiphany was putting together all the disparate musical parts and saying that's folk music.

Frank Hamilton