“The music took him one piece at a time… until there wasn’t enough left for us.” At 82, Temple Medley — Conway Twitty’s first and only wife — finally broke the silence she held for nearly six decades. She didn’t speak of the superstar the world adored, but of Harold — the man she loved before fame, before pressure, before the loneliness that success brought with it. When asked why their marriage ended, she didn’t blame betrayal. “It was distance,” she said quietly. “The music took him one piece at a time… until there wasn’t enough left for us.” Temple never remarried. “You only get one true love,” she confessed. “I already had mine.” Friends say she still keeps their wedding photo beside her bed — a reminder of the life they had before the world claimed him. For Conway’s fans, her words reveal the hidden cost of brilliance… and the lifelong devotion of the woman who loved the man long before he became a legend.

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

Introduction

After more than half a century of silence, Temple Medley — known to fans as Mickey Jenkins, the first and only wife of Conway Twitty — has finally spoken. Now 82 years old, the woman who once stood quietly beside one of country music’s greatest legends has revealed the deeply emotional truth behind their divorce, their enduring bond, and why she never remarried.

For decades, she avoided the spotlight. While Conway’s fame grew from rock ’n’ roll heartthrob to country icon, Mickey remained a mystery — a chapter rarely discussed, even by those closest to him. But in a new, quietly recorded interview shared by family friends, her voice carries the tone of both tenderness and time.

“I never stopped loving him,” she admits softly. “But sometimes love isn’t enough to survive the world that comes with it.”

The couple married young — long before “Hello Darlin’,” “It’s Only Make Believe,” or the stage lights of Nashville ever defined him. They raised four children together, built a family from scratch, and weathered the lean years when money was tight and dreams seemed far away. But as Conway’s career soared through the 1960s and ’70s, the distance between home and the road began to widen.

“I used to wait up for him,” she recalls. “Some nights, he came home so tired he couldn’t speak. Other nights, he couldn’t come home at all.”

By the late 1970s, the strain had taken its toll. Conway’s fame had turned him into a public figure of mythic proportions, while Mickey — devoted mother, steadfast partner — found herself fading into the background of his growing legend. Their divorce, finalized quietly and without spectacle, left her heartbroken but resolute.

“People always ask why I never remarried,” she says, pausing for a long breath. “Because once you’ve loved someone that deeply, you don’t start over. You just keep loving them differently.”

In her words, there’s no bitterness — only reflection. She speaks with grace about the man the world adored and the husband only she truly knew: gentle, conflicted, driven by music and haunted by loneliness.

“When he sang ‘I’d Love to Lay You Down,’ I knew that part of him still longed for home,” she confides. “But the stage became his home. And I had to let him go.”

Now, after all these years, Temple Medley’s voice offers the missing half of Conway Twitty’s story — the love that shaped him, the heartbreak that deepened his songs, and the quiet devotion that never really ended.

“He was my first everything,” she says in closing. “And in some ways, he still is.”

For the millions who grew up on his music, her words add a final verse to the song — not about fame or failure, but about the kind of love that outlasts both.

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Lyrics

Now I’m lying here with Linda on my mind
And next to me, my soon to be, the one I left behind
And Lord it’s killing me to see her crying
She knows I’m lying here beside her with Linda on my mind.
Yes I know that I once loved her
And I placed no one above her
And I never thought I’d ever set her free
But it just wasn’t in my plan
The way Linda squeezed my hand
The first time that I held her close as she danced with me.
She said I’ve loved you for a long time
But you’re married to a friend of mine
And I tried hard to never let it show
But my love for you is stronger
I can’t hide it any longer
And so I thought I’d better let you know.
Now I’m lying here with Linda on my mind
And next to me, my soon to be, the one I left behind
And Lord it’s killing me to see her crying
She knows I’m lying here beside her with Linda on my mind

Country Music

Two Weeks Before Doo Died, Loretta Lynn Took Him to Get Hearing Aids Because He Could No Longer Hear the Music During the final month of Doolittle Lynn’s life, he kept telling Loretta that he could no longer hear the music. At first, she misunderstood him. After nearly five decades of marriage, so much of it shaped by her career, Loretta thought Doo might be asking her to stop singing. She later said she would have done it if that was what he wanted. Then she realized the problem was physical. Diabetes and heart disease had confined him to a bed and wheelchair. His legs had been amputated, his eyesight was failing, and now his hearing was disappearing. Two weeks before his death, Loretta took him to be fitted with a pair of tiny hearing aids. By then, she had already placed most of her career aside. Loretta later remembered Doo being bedridden for roughly six years. She stayed home at Hurricane Mills and cared for him around the clock, cutting back her performances and no longer writing songs. When an interviewer asked what had happened to her career during those years, she answered that she did not know. Taking care of Doo had become the work. He died from diabetes-related complications and heart failure in August 1996, five days before his seventieth birthday. Loretta stayed away from performing for another year because, as she put it, she did not have the heart to return. When she eventually entered the studio again, one song brought the final weeks back into the room. “I Can’t Hear the Music,” written with Cody James and Kendal Franceschi, turned Doo’s failing hearing into Loretta’s description of widowhood. The man who had once pushed her toward a stage was gone, and she could no longer hear the voice that had always told her she could do more. During the recording, Loretta repeatedly broke down. At one point, producer Randy Scruggs stopped the session for roughly forty-five minutes. He asked her to think about something she wanted—anything that might carry her through the final chorus. Loretta had not eaten that day. Through the studio window, she had noticed a Snickers bar in the vending machine. She fixed her mind on the candy bar, returned to the microphone and finished the take. Some of her crying remained on the record. The song preserved Doo’s last silence. The little promise of chocolate got Loretta through the chorus.

Country Music

Loretta Lynn Sometimes Had to Ask Her Twin Daughters to Turn Around So She Could Tell Which One She Was Calling When Loretta Lynn hurried between the stage and her tour bus, she sometimes called her youngest daughters by a single name: “Twin.” Peggy and Patsy Lynn hated it. The girls were identical, and Loretta spent so much time on the road that she occasionally needed them to turn and face her before she could tell them apart. If everyone was moving quickly, she skipped the question and called for both at once. “Come here, Twin.” Peggy and Patsy would protest that they were two people, not one. Their father Doo usually warned them not to talk back to their mother, though the correction carried little force. He understood why the name made them angry. The twins were born in August 1964, when Loretta’s career was accelerating. She named Peggy after her younger sister Peggy Sue and Patsy after Patsy Cline, who had died the previous year. By the time the girls were old enough to remember their mother’s schedule, Loretta was performing as many as two hundred concerts a year. There were stretches when she disappeared for a month or more. Peggy later said she and Patsy spent so much time with Doo that extended visits from Loretta could feel like time with a favorite aunt. Their father kept them in public school, took them to church twice a week and expected them to hoe the garden and help put up hay. Loretta knew what the touring cost. She later called leaving her children the worst part of her career. But Hurricane Mills had to be paid for, and every new acre Doo purchased created another bill. When Loretta returned home and found the property growing, she understood who would have to go back onto the road. The twins eventually joined her there. In 1990, Loretta walked into the tour bus and told them to learn the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” When Peggy and Patsy sang the first note together, the harmony filled the bus. Both women immediately understood that they were a duo. They later performed anonymously at Tootsie’s as the Honk-a-Billies, refusing to use their mother’s name to secure attention. A Warner Bros. representative heard them before learning they were Loretta Lynn’s daughters. As children, they had fought to make their mother call them separately. As grown women, Peggy and Patsy finally chose when their two voices would become one.

Country Music

In 1978, Eddie Rabbitt gave one of the final credits on Variations to a 78-year-old man who had spent his working life around an oil refinery. The musician was his father, Thomas Rabbitt. The instrument was the fiddle Eddie had been hearing since childhood. Thomas and Mae Rabbitt had come to America from Ireland and settled in New Jersey. During the week, Thomas worked in refrigeration at the refinery. Away from the plant, he played fiddle and accordion at Irish dances, family parties and neighborhood gatherings. Jigs and reels filled the house long before their son understood how far those melodies had traveled. Eddie eventually carried them to Nashville. He became known for polished country records that moved easily toward pop, but he believed the minor chords in his writing came from the Irish music his father played. On Variations, surrounded by Nashville session musicians, he decided to make that inheritance audible. “Song of Ireland” was written with Even Stevens and producer David Malloy. Eddie sang about being born in America while feeling drawn toward a country he had never seen. Near the heart of the recording, the song opened into the traditional Irish tune “Mist in the Meadow.” Thomas played it. The moment was not presented as a novelty or a sentimental spoken introduction. His fiddle simply entered the arrangement, carrying the music he had brought through dance halls and weekend gatherings into his son’s Nashville studio. Variations also contained major country hits, including “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” and “I Just Want to Love You.” Those songs carried the album onto the charts. “Song of Ireland” remained tucked near the end, never becoming one of Eddie’s signature singles. Yet its personnel list preserved something the hits could not. Among Nashville players such as Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Reggie Young and Joe Osborn appeared one unusually personal line: Thomas Rabbitt — Irish fiddle, track ten. Years later, Eddie still made room during his concerts for the old fiddle tunes his father had played. By then the refinery shifts and New Jersey dance halls were far behind them. The music Thomas carried into the family, however, had found its way onto a record bearing his son’s name. More of the Rabbitt family’s Irish story appears below, along with the recording on which father and son finally shared the same album credit.

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