Country music as we know it today would not exist without Hank Williams. Prior to his untimely death at age 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, he penned multiple genre standards including “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Hey Good Lookin’”. However, it’s also fair to say that Hank Williams’ career would not exist without his first wife, Audrey Williams. Born on this day (Feb. 28) in 1923, she managed her husband’s career and birthed another future star, their son Hank Williams Jr.
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How Did Audrey and Hank Williams Meet?
Born Audrey Mae Sheppard in the tiny town of Banks, Alabama, Williams married her first husband during her senior year of high school. The couple separated shortly after their only child, a daughter, was born in 1941.
Two years later, the 20-year-old met an aspiring musician named Hank Williams when he was performing near her hometown with a traveling medicine show. After just two dates, the country star asked for her hand in marriage. While the couple wouldn’t officially tie the knot for another year, Audrey Williams convinced Hank—over the protests of his mother and bandmates—to move to Montgomery with her so they could start a band.
In December 1944, just days after Audrey officially divorced her first husband, she and Hank Williams were wed by a justice of the peace at a Texaco Station in Andalusia, Alabama. Once the marriage certificate was signed, Audrey stepped into the role of mother-in-law Lillie Williams as Hank’s unofficial manager.
The couple headed to Nashville, where the “Lovesick Blues” crooner auditioned for the Grand Ole Opry. It didn’t go well, but Audrey convinced record exec Fred Rose, of Acuff-Rose, to give her new groom another shot. Rose was impressed, and Hank landed a six-song contract, which he leveraged into a record deal with MGM Records.
A Soaring Career and a Tumultuous Marriage
Hank Williams recorded several duets with his wife, including “Lost on the River”, “Dear Brother”, and “Jesus Remembered Me”. The duo also co-wrote “On the Evening Train”, which Johnny Cash would later record for his 2006 album, American V: A Hundred Highways. Audrey was also mentioned in Cash’s song “The Night Hank Williams Came To Town” with the line, “How’d They Get Miss Audrey In That Gown.”
However, as the “Hillbilly Shakespeare’s” star rose, his struggles with alcohol intensified. Giving him a choice between booze and her, Audrey Williams left her husband in early 1948.
Eventually they reunited, and Audrey gave birth to their only child, Randall Hank Williams, in Shreveport, Louisiana. However, tensions continued to escalate, and the couple split for good in 1952. Eerily, Hank reportedly responded to his wife’s request for a divorce with, “Audrey, I won’t live another year without you.”
Although he married second wife Billie Jean Jones that same year, Williams’ words came true on New Year’s Day 1953, when he died of heart failure in the backseat of his Cadillac.
Audrey Williams never remarried before her own death from congestive heart failure, on Nov. 4, 1975. She was 52 years old.
Featured image by Archive Photos/Getty Images
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