Jerry Lee Lewis dies at 87: What Myra Williams, his 13-year-old wife, said about their marriage
Jerry Lee Lewis for the prolific music career that cemented his status as a rock ‘n’ roll icon before his death at age 87 Friday.
But that career hit a sharp nosedive in 1958, when the 22-year-old musician’s marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin, became public.
In 2014, Brown, then 70 and known as Myra Williams, gave an interview to music journalist Alan Light published in Cuepoint, in which she reflected on her shocking relationship with Lewis.
“It’s not a story that ever went away. I’m still the 13-year-old child bride,” Williams, who became a real-estate broker in Atlanta, said. “Sometimes I say something about Jerry and people say, ‘Isn’t he the one married the little girl?’ and I say, ‘Wait a second, you’re talking to the little girl now—be careful what you say.’ “
Williams and Lewis divorced in 1970. Lewis had seven wives throughout his life, and Williams was his third.
Williams also recalled how she “let the big ol’ cat out of the bag” about their marriage to the press in London without realizing the backlash it would spark.
“In my little mind, I couldn’t believe that they could not see that I was a grown woman,” she said. “My generation was taught to hide under our desk when the bomb came, so you always had in the back of your mind that any minute, any day, life could come to an end.”
Jerry Lee Lewis, rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and perpetual ball of fire, dies at 87
“It was something that marked Jerry for life,” she said. “We kept thinking every year, every six months, that it was going to go away, they’re going to stop talking about it, and it just didn’t happen. But it brought me and Jerry very close, and we had ten incredible, wonderful years together after that. We were like a little camp that had been attacked by the enemy, and we held strong to each other and said, regardless of what they do, we’re going to keep fighting.”
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