Nancy Jones, the widow of country music legend George Jones, says she is "out having a good time now" after dedicating their 32-year marriage to saving him from addiction.
Over a decade into her widowhood, the 77-year-old told the Drifting Cowboy podcast that she has "mellowed out" and is no longer "mean" in the way she "had to be" while caring for her husband.
"Right now, I'm just trying to enjoy life. I had 32 years with him and I have missed out on life and so I'm enjoying life now," she said.
The couple exchanged vows in 1983, and Nancy shepherded him to sobriety and a career comeback that lasted until his death in 2013 at the age of 81.
Saving a country legend
"And you know, a lot of people don't expect me to go out and do this and do that. I deserve it. I really do, and I pat myself on the back because I put 32 years of my life saving a man, and so that's why I'm out having a good time now," she said.
Nancy characterised Jones as "a good man" who had become enmeshed with the "wrong crowd."
"They were doing things that I did not approve of, so I just stayed there thinking: 'I've gotta save this man.' So I really, in my heart, I'll always believe that's why God put me on this earth," she added.
However, she clarified that she "wouldn't wish it on nobody."
"And when people say something like: 'She didn't straighten him out, God did,' yeah, God did, but I had to lead him back to God and I had to have the patience with him," she said.
Nancy explained that the "first thing" Jones would tell someone was "don't nag me", which prompted her to never do so.
"I never did. I learned to have patience with him and I think that's what was the clue to the whole thing," she explained.
A hellraising reputation
The pair met on a blind date in 1981. Nancy was 34 and divorced, while Jones was a 50-year-old washout whose career had fizzled due to his hellraising reputation.
During the first decades of his career, from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, the singer hurtled into a maelstrom of alcohol and cocaine.
He was repeatedly institutionalised and missed so many concerts that he acquired the nickname "No Show Jones."
One of his legendary drinking stories involved his second wife hiding the car keys to prevent him from going out for alcohol, which prompted him to clamber onto a lawnmower and spend over an hour riding it to the liquor store.
He went through three divorces, including one from "Stand By Your Man" singer Tammy Wynette, before achieving a lasting marriage with Nancy.
Nancy, a teetotaller, wrenched him onto the straight and narrow. She fended off his drug dealers so effectively that they retaliated at one point by abducting her daughter, according to Jones's memoir.
To protect him and manage his career, she developed an indomitable persona that caused her to clash even with music executive Rick Blackburn, a giant in the Nashville scene during the heyday of country icons such as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.
Dealing with a mean drunk
On the podcast, Nancy recalled the way alcohol affected her husband.
"George would get one drink, he'd be funny. Two drinks, oh, you'd be laughing. Everybody laughing and I'm like: 'Oh, y'all just wait,'" she said.
"But after that, George was a mean drunk. I'm not gonna deny it. He was a mean drunk. He thought he could whip anybody, and he was a strong man. I mean to be so little, George was strong," she added.
While publicising her 2023 book, "Playin' Possum: My Memories of George Jones," she told People magazine that he had been "very abusive" before achieving sobriety.
"I'm not going to lie," she told the publication. "But I knew there was a good man there. I loved this man, and I knew I was fighting for a good man, and I knew that it was not George when he was acting up and being drunk and doing the things he was doing that was not him. It was those demons coming out."
She insisted that when he was drunk and using cocaine, she did not hear George's voice, but rather a different voice from the man she knew.
Jones confessed in his 1996 autobiography, "I Lived to Tell It All," that he had struck Nancy.
Finding his saving grace
Despite his struggles, the singer behind hit singles such as "White Lightning," "The Grand Tour," and "He Stopped Loving Her Today" ultimately found his saving grace in Nancy.
"No teenage boy ever fell harder for a girl than I fell for Nancy Sepulvado," Jones wrote in his autobiography.
Two years before his death, he told the Nashville Music Guide: "I credit Nancy for saving my life. I am sure I wouldn't still be here and I certainly wouldn't have a career anymore if it wasn't for her."
Speaking to the Tennessean in 2015, two years after his passing, Nancy said God put her with him to help "get the devil out of him."
"God put me there to do a job, and I did it," she said.
"God told me: 'If you leave him, he's going to die.' And I said: 'You know what, you're too good of a man to let go to hell, and I'm not gonna let you do it.' You have to throw every bit of love in your body to live with someone like that."
