Behind every good man is an even better woman, and Nancy Jones certainly saved George Jones more than once.
In 2023, Nancy, his wife of 30 years, Nancy Jones, released a book called Playin’ Possum: My Memories of George Jones, which she wrote along with 18-time New York Times bestselling author Ken Abraham.
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 in a recently-released clip of an interview Nancy did with Today’s Nashville, she says there was only one reason she was able to endure “emotional and physical abuse when George was drinking,” as the interviewer put it.
Nancy says her faith in Jesus was the only reason she made it, because she felt as though it was her mission to get her husband into Heaven:
“With Jesus. I would’ve never made it without Jesus, I can tell you that. He kept me going. And I knew that I had to keep going in order to get this man to Heaven, because when he wasn’t drinking and doing all this stuff, you couldn’t ask for anybody sweeter or nicer. He was the perfect husband.
But once he got two drinks in him, he changed. I mean, you would’ve thought, how can anybody change from two drinks and just get bad, and worse, and bad. and then it just got so bad. So yes, without Jesus and me praying as hard as I prayed during all that time, I would’ve never made it.”
Nancy never distanced herself from Jones, but prayed for him every day, and eventually, helped him set himself free from all the demons that held him down. She explained that she needed to be near him to be able to calm him down once he started drinking, and there were two topics that would usually do the trick, his mother and Jesus.
One of the unique challenges was the fact that, when George drank, his “multiple personalities” would come out, which included a Donald Duck-like character called “DeeDoodle” and “The Old Man,” which was based on the old movie star Walter Brennan. Apparently, excessive drug used forced some kind of psychotic breakdown in the country singers mind, to the point where he developed a multiple personality disorder and those aforementioned characters:
“I had to get ready to be able to… with George, you could calm him down talking about his mother. You could calm him down talking about Jesus. So I knew that Jesus was in there, I just had to bring him out. He was just a totally different person, and there were so many demons in there.
And in the book, it’s got a part about how everybody in Nashville knows it, how he would go around and talk like an old man, talk like Donald Duck, and he was good at it too. So I had to get rid of those two people.”
The psychotic breaks would happen when he was driving too, and the conversations between the “duck” and the “old man” would get so heated, that George would have to get in the middle of them to calm them down.
But on a trip to Alabama one time, she had enough, and came up with a “crazy” way to get rid of the demons:
“We were driving to Alabama, and kept on talking and arguing with those people. So I finally said, just stop the car. He said,’ What?’ I said, I’m gonna get rid of them. He said, ‘How are you gonna do it?’ I said, ‘I’ll show you.’ So I opened the door, I pulled out the old man, I pulled out the duck, guess what? The duck went back in. I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, let me get the duck.’ I would get the duck. I mean, it was crazy, but that’s how far gone he was.
And I did get rid of them. So I slammed the door, and I said, ‘Let’s go.’ And he said, ‘Oh, thank you so much for getting rid of them, they were killing me.'”
She added that he “never, ever” talked about, or to them, again, and their love story is an incredible testament to her faith and devotion to the man she loved, even when I’m sure most people thought she was as crazy as he was for staying with him through all of that.
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.
@todaysnashville Nancy Jones shares her life with country music legend George Jones. Watch full episode – YouTube.com/todaysnashville #Jesus #christiantiktok #countrymusic #God #shorts #music #prayer #nashville ♬ original sound – Today’s Nashville
You can watch the full video here:
