Family, close contacts mum on real age
The AP discovered the discrepancy in Lynn’s age after a reporter found Lynn’s Kentucky birth certificate online and changed her birthdate in the news agency’s database of celebrity birthdays. The Country Music Hall of Fame contacted the AP after that to clear up the issue.
Lynn addresses the perils of disclosing her age in her autobiography.
“When I was born, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the president for several years. That’s the closest I’m gonna come to telling my age in this book, so don’t go looking for it,” she writes. “I’m trying to make a living singing songs. I don’t need nobody out there saying, ‘She don’t look bad considering she’s such-and-such years old.”‘
Lynn’s co-author on Coal Miner’s Daughter, New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey, said in a phone interview that he did not verify the age claims in the book with official documentation.
“It’s her book, and I never saw a birth certificate, marriage license. It’s what they told me,” he said. “I couldn’t say that she was the one who told me first. Between her manager (David Skepner) who has passed and her husband who has now passed, it was at least three different people telling me that.”
Vecsey said he did not want to speculate on what the age difference means to Lynn’s narrative.
Lynn’s daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
Webb, her brother who lives in their hometown of Van Lear, Ky., believes “there might have been a mix-up somewhere along the line” when Lynn first arrived in Nashville and signed with the Wilburn Brothers.
“When she was with Teddy and Doyle [Wilburn], she just don’t tell her age after that,” he said. “I think they got some of her paperwork messed up.”
Webb declined to comment on Lynn’s age. When asked his own birthday, like a good brother, he replied: “I was born a year and a half after she was.”
