Tammy Wynette hadn’t even been on a date with George Jones when the country music artist decided to pull the plug on her second marriage and start a life with him. The romantic incident unfolded in 1968 at the home that Wynette, then about 26, shared with her second husband, Don Chapel. By that point, Wynette—born Virginia Wynette Pugh—had hustled her way onto the Nashville music scene, having hauled her three young daughters to interviews with music producers. She met and began working with Jones, the music star she idolized who had been topping charts since the late ’50s.

As Jones recalled in his 1996 autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, he joined Wynette, Chapel, and their children for dinner one 1968 evening, when Chapel began insulting Wynette. In response, Jones flipped over the dining room table and professed his love to Wynette. Then, Wynette, her three daughters, and Jones left—never looking back. The electric scene is recreated in Showtime’s new series George & Tammy, premiering Sunday. The limited series tracks country music’s most fiery love story, with Jones played by Michael Shannon and Wynette played by Jessica Chastain.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Wynette and Jones’s daughter, Georgette Jones, says she still believes her parents’ love story was fated—even though their marriage only lasted five years and their tumultuous lives often echoed the heartbreak in their lyrics.

“I think it was something that was going to happen to them inevitably, regardless of what Don had said or done on that particular night,” says Georgette, a singer-songwriter who also acted as consulting producer on the series. “My dad and mom had such a connection over music that it was very easy for them to go down that road.… [My mom] knew this was her soulmate. But unfortunately, sometimes love isn’t enough.”

Wynette would go on to record more than 50 albums, sell more than 30 million recordings, and cowrite and record the everlasting 1968 anthem “Stand by Your Man.” Jones has been heralded as one of the greatest country singers of all time by critics and icons alike, including Merle Haggard, Frank Sinatra, and Keith Richards. While Wynette and Jones were married, they toured on a bus emblazoned with the words “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music,” but Jones’s alcoholism, drug use, and colorful offstage antics drove the couple apart. “I kept reading articles that said I was the greatest country singer alive,” Jones later wrote in his 1996 memoir. “I was always appreciative, but I never understood how such a supposedly good singer could be such a troubled person. My talent, though it brought me fame and fortune, never brought me peace of mind.”

Wynette and Jones divorced in 1975, but Georgette says the pair made many attempts to reconcile romantically. “They tried to date for the longest time, even after they were divorced. They still kept trying and I think that shows how much they cared about each other—that they kept hoping the circumstances would be different enough that they could finally make it work.”

Tammy Wynette And George Jones, Wembley Arena, London – 1981.By Brian Rasic/ Getty Images.

In 1980, the two reunited more successfully onstage, with the album Together Again, and continued to tour and record together until the mid-1990s, even after each remarried. (Wynette married twice more while Jones married once more.) Georgette acknowledges that her parents were hopeless romantics and maintained a special connection throughout the rest of their lives, explaining, “My dad had an attention to detail that was like no other…even when [my parents] weren’t together anymore, if he knew she liked something, and it was her birthday or something, he would still send things and do kind things.” But Jones continued to struggle with alcoholism and financial troubles; according to The New York Times, “he earned millions of dollars and lost much of it to drug use, mismanagement, and divorce settlements.” Wynette eventually spent time at the Betty Ford Center for her own addiction to prescription painkillers, before dying in 1998. Georgette says that her father was so heartbroken “that he couldn’t sleep for three days straight.” Jones died 15 years later in 2013.

Georgette says she first heard there was interest in a Hollywood adaptation of her parents’ story that same year, but she was understandably reluctant. “There were certain things that were important to me,” she says, explaining that she had no interest in a project that “sensationalized the drinking and the drugs. I wanted to make sure that my parents were seen as human beings, that their lives were displayed in an honest way—good and bad.” She says that miniseries creator, Abe Sylvia—who had initially envisioned the project as a film—“reassured me that this story was about them, their love story, and was really going to focus on their life together.” Georgette says she spoke at length to the writers and Chastain about her personal memories of her parents, which she detailed in her 2011 book, The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George. “I wanted them to know how loving and fun and caring my parents were, and [for] that to show through too, not just the sensational music and craziness of their love story.”

Julie Miller

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