She’s a heck of a woman, that’s for sure.
Behind every good man is an even better woman, and Nancy Jones certainly saved George Jones more than once. Of course, I think we’ve all heard the stories about Jones’ wild days, like how he took his lawnmower to the liquor store after his wife hid the keys to his car to keep him from drinking… that one’s legendary. Nancy put up with a lot, to say the least, and during an episode of the Drifting Cowboy Podcast this week, she opened up about what her life is like now, 13 years after losing George.
She says that she is “enjoying life now,” and even though people don’t expect her to be out doing things all the time, she feels as though she deserves it after putting “32 years of my life [into] saving a man”:
“I’m not mean no more. I had to be. But… I’m all mellowed out. I have missed out on life and so I’m enjoying life now. 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.”
As she absolutely should…
I imagine there were long stretches, maybe even years, for her that felt like total hell, and of course she believes her late husband “was a good man,” but dealing with someone who struggled as much with drugs and alcohol as he did (and his multiple personalities), I really can’t imagine what she went through.
Nancy explained that she believes she was put on this earth to “save” George, and she really did help him through some of the darkest times of his life. She also believed he had bad people around him, which only exacerbated his struggles and made it harder to clean up:
“I knew that the man was with the wrong crowd and they were doing things that I did not approve of. So I just stayed there thinking, ‘I’ve got to save this man.’ I really, in my heart, I’ll always believe that’s why God put me on this earth.”
Nancy wrote a memoir that was released in 2023 called Playin’ Possum: My Memories of George Jones, which has a lot of detail about what they went through, though Nancy doesn’t take credit for George ultimately getting sober. She knows God did it, and she just had the patience to see it through:
“I’m not going to say nothing I did was easy. I wouldn’t wish it on nobody. People say [things] 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.
The first thing he would tell you was, ‘Don’t nag me.’ I never nagged him. I never did. I learned to have patience with him, and I think that was what was the clue to the whole thing.”
The fact that she went through him and never nagged… she deserves an award for that, even without dealing with all the drugs and drinking issues. That’s a really incredible example of patience.
Later in life, Jones did eventually get completely sober for good in 1999, becoming a devout Christian as well, after a serious car wrecked changed his entire world. God bless Nancy Jones for praying for her husband for decades, because even though it probably took longer than anyone would’ve wanted, she helped George find true healing and hope before he sadly passed away in 2013.
Nancy knows he’s in heaven now, and she’s happy that he lived his final years, from 1999 to 2013, in peace, free from the bad things that had a grip on him for so many years:
“I know he’s in heaven and I know he’s just having a blast because when he hit that bridge in ‘99, to 2013 he never touched another drink or never smoked another cigarette.”
Many tines, George credited Nancy for saving him, and it seems as though they were truly in love and meant for each other.
The full podcast is available below.
