Country legend's widow scathingly reveals she's finally enjoying life after spending '32 years saving a man'

Nancy Jones, the widow of country legend George Jones, declared she is 'out having a good time now' after spending their 32-year marriage 'saving' him from addiction.

In the first decades of his career from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, he hurtled into a maelstrom of alcohol and cocaine that led to his being repeatedly institutionalized and missing so many concerts he acquired the sobriquet 'No Show Jones.'

After three divorces, including one from Stand By Your Man singer Tammy Wynette, he finally achieved a lasting marriage with Nancy.

They exchanged vows in 1983 and she shepherded him to sobriety and a career comeback he enjoyed until his death in 2013 at the age of 81.

Now, over a decade into her widowhood, she explained that she has 'mellowed out' and is no longer 'mean' in the way she 'had to be' while caring for George.

'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,' said Nancy, 77, on the podcast Drifting Cowboy.

'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.

The indomitable persona she developed to protect Jones and manage his career caused her to clash with music executive Rick Blackburn, a giant in the Nashville scene during the heyday of country icons such as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.

Nancy met George on a blind date in 1981, when she was 34 and divorced and he was a 50-year-old washout, his career having fizzled as a result of his hellraising reputation.

One of his legendary drinking stories involved his second wife hiding the car keys to prevent him from going out for alcohol, prompting him to clamber onto the lawnmower and spend over an hour riding it to the liquor store.

Yet the musician, whose hit singles included 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,' he wrote in his 1996 autobiography I Lived to Tell It All.

Nancy, a teetotaler, married George in 1983 and wrenched him onto the straight and narrow, fending off his drug dealers so effectively that at one point they retaliated by abducting her daughter, according to the memoir.

He confessed in his book to having struck Nancy, and while promoting her own 2023 memoir she described him as having been 'very abusive' before his sobriety. 

In her new interview, Nancy characterized her late husband as 'a good man' who had become enmeshed in the 'wrong crowd and 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.'

Nevertheless she 'wouldn't wish it on nobody,' she clarified. '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.'

Nancy explained that the 'first thing' George would 'tell you was: "Don't nag me,"' as a consequence of which she 'never nagged him. I never did. I learned to have patience with him and I think that's what was the clue to the whole thing.'

She recalled: '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." 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.'

While publicizing her 2023 book Playin' Possum: My Memories of George Jones, she reflected on the way that alcohol and cocaine transformed his personality.

'He was very abusive. I'm not going to lie,' she told People. '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.'

Nancy insisted: 'When he was so drunk and on cocaine and all this stuff, that was not George’s voice that I would hear. It was not the same voice of the man that I knew.'

'I credit Nancy for saving my life,' George stated  two years before his death in an interview with Nashville Music Guide. 'I am sure I wouldn’t still be here and I certainly wouldn’t have a career anymore if it wasn’t for her.'

Two years after he died, Nancy declared: 'God put me with him to help him get the devil out of him. God put me there to do a job, and I did it,' via the Tennessean.

'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.'