Before Lorrie and Keith married in 1986, Keith’s manager, Don Light, informed Lorrie of Keith’s alcoholism and Lorrie truly believed it wouldn’t be that big a deal.
“I’d been around alcoholism throughout my life,” she said in an interview a year after her husband’s death. “I never, never expected anything as bad as Keith had it. I thought it would just take love and someone to help him to get through with it. He wanted it that way. But something inside of him wouldn’t let him. It literally was like he had cancer and could not control.”
In total, she said they had about six months of pure marital bliss before alcohol became a problem and turned her husband into “somebody…I didn’t know.”
Ultimately, it sounds like Lorrie had been expecting the phone call she got the May prior to this interview.
“‘Every time the phone would ring, it was in the back of my mind that there was somebody calling to tell me he’s been in a wreck or died of alcohol. It was a living hell. I was on pins and needles when he was on the road,” she said.