Loretta Lynn was married to her husband for almost 50 years before he died
Loretta Lynn (@LorettaLynn) is pictured here with her husband, Mooney, and her daughters Patsy and Peggy on the porch of their antebellum home in Hurricane Mills, TN c.1970. #TBT pic.twitter.com/i3bFKRlqCO
— Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (@countrymusichof) May 23, 2019
The Grammy-winning country star wrote about her marriage in her autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, giving Oliver, whom she called “Doolittle,” credit for her success. According to her, “there would be no career” without him.
“I wouldn’t have started singing in the first place,” she wrote, “and I wouldn’t have had the inspiration for some of my best songs, in the second place.”
She added, “So in a real sense, Doolittle is responsible for everything we got.”
Lynn said Oliver was a good husband “in most ways,” though she noted, “I don’t want to say he’s never fooled around, or gotten drunk, or whipped me into line a little, because that ain’t the truth. There were plenty of bad moments in our marriage …”
Oliver died in 1996 after 48 years of marriage. At the end of his life, he claimed to Lynn that he’d always been faithful, though she might not have been convinced of the truth in that unbelievable deathbed confession. Nevertheless, she told People that though they had “little fights,” he always “meant everything to [her],” adding, “Still does.”
Loretta Lynn survived for more than 26 years after Oliver died but never remarried before her death in 2022.
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