Country music star Tammy Wynette grew up with her grandparents and once said her grandfather couldn’t ever understand how she turned singing into a career.
In an interview she gave near the end of her life, she talked about her childhood and returning home to visit after becoming a star. And she revealed that her grandpa often questioned her, wondering “just how” she was making all her money.
Tammy Wynette’s grandfather helped raise her before she became a country music icon
After Wynette was born in Mississippi, her father died, and her mother left after she remarried. Her grandparents raised her, and she first earned money working on her grandfather’s cotton farm.
In a 1992 interview with John Tesh, Wynette said she bought the house she was born in and would visit to remind herself of those hard-working days with her grandparents. She recalled that she started picking cotton in the fields when she was three years old and disclosed how she kept a bowl of cotton around her house to remind her of those times.
Tammy Wynette’s grandfather ‘never got used to the idea’ that she sang for a living
While talking to Tesh about her rags-to-riches journey, Wynette said some of her family back in Mississippi couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
“My grandfather, that helped raise me, never ever got used to the idea that I sang,” she recalled. So, he would ask her if she needed money when she visited, and she would tell him she had money.
“Just how do you make your money?” he would ask, as she recalled, to which she would reply, “I sing.”
And that would make him wonder, “They pay you for that?”
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For the record, she added that she “never really understood” it, either.
Tammy Wynette only took home $90 for a week after her first singing job
While chatting with Tesh, Wynette recalled the first time she sang for money was at an establishment in Atlanta, Georgia. They called and offered her $500 for the week, which sounded great at first.
But she immediately split the payment in half to pay the band to back her. After that, she had to pay for her hotel room and a babysitter for three kids, plus the gas to get from Nashville, Tennessee, to Atlanta. So, she recalled she had about $90 left by the time she got home, but said it lasted a long time.
Of course, she eventually made it big. Her third husband, George Jones, whom she married in 1969, bought her a legendary Nashville estate in 1974 that they dubbed “First Lady Acres.”
According to Zillow, “Their parties were famous among the whose who of the music industry, and much to the pleasure of Tammy and George, an invitation to ‘First Lady Acres’ quickly became more coveted than an invitation to the White House!”
After Wynette and Jones divorced in 1975, the home went on the market. After a significant redesign in more recent years, it sold for $3 million in 2017.
Notably, Wynette’s net worth was estimated at less than a million when she died in 1998.
