Tammy Wynette and George Jones are considered royalty in the country music world, but their renowned marriage was not without its share of ups and downs. Wynette wed Jones when, and why did she divorce him? And how did they get along up until her dubious demise, which, incidentally, prompted a lawsuit against her widower and doctor? Continue reading to learn more.
When Did Tammy Wynette Marry George Jones?
Wynette and Jones got married on February 16, 1969, and the next year, Wynette gave birth to their only daughter. Georgette Jones, that woman’s daughter, wrote a book about her life called The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George.
“Mom thought Dad was a great musician, but he was so much more than that,” she wrote. “Mom thought she had found her Prince Charming at last. She was desperate for a winner.”
Jones was “rough around the edges” when he was drunk, but Wynette loved him and thought things would get better between them someday. “She thought she could change him, as a lot of women have thought about men they loved,” Georgette said.
Why Did Tammy Wynette Divorce From George Jones?
Jones was known to drink too much, which sometimes got him into trouble. Reba McEntire once wrote a song about that.
At the end of her memoir, Georgette wrote, “She could never change him, but she loved him even as she was leaving him.” The biography says that Wynette first tried to get a divorce in 1973, but the couple got back together for a while before she tried again. In 1975, they officially split up.
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Wynette later wrote a book about the drunken things her ex-husband did while they were married. She said he once chased her with a gun, which he later denied in his own autobiography. But even though they got divorced and he was accused of things, they worked together on music for most of the rest of her life.
Wynette has married a total of five times. She got married twice before Jones and twice more after they broke up. In the meantime, he got married four times, but only once after Wynette.
Tammy Wynette And George Jone’s Death
Wynette’s health got worse as she got older, and she had dozens of surgeries and other medical procedures to fix her abdominal adhesions. On April 6, 1998, when she was 55 years old, she died of a blood clot in the lungs. But she was buried before the body was checked out.
In the book Tammy Wynette: A Daughter Recalls Her Mother’s Tragic Life and Death, Wynette’s daughter Jackie Daly says she thinks her mother’s death was caused in part by her addiction to prescription painkillers. She said that Wynette’s real need for medicine started a habit that some people in her life fed.
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According to MTV, Wynette’s daughters sued their mother’s doctor for wrongful death. The suit originally included George Richey, who was her fifth husband and had been with her for almost 20 years. They said he killed her by giving her the drugs, but his name was later taken off the list.
CMT said that Wynette’s body was dug up about a year after she died, and heart failure was found to be the cause of her death. After that, the two sides worked out a deal without going to court.
Jones died on April 26, 2013, because he couldn’t breathe. He was 81 years old. A series called “George and Tammy” shows that the couple’s influence on pop culture is still strong. Jones is played by Michael Shannon, and Wynette is played by Jessica Chastain.