George Jones widow Nancy has revisited the country legend’s final words in a new interview, 13 years after his death and just weeks before she hosts a celebration marking what would have been his 95th birthday at The Nashville Palace.

Known as the Possum, George Jones was sharing bills with Elvis Presley in the 1950s and was still touring in the 2010s. His career spanned nearly six decades. Dolly Parton, whose death this week has left country music reflecting on the loss of one of its defining figures, called Jones her “all-time favourite singer”. Garth Brooks has called him the greatest country singer who ever lived. For someone known as “no-show Jones” he certainly shows up everywhere in country music today.

Luke Combs performed ‘The Grand Tour’ during the Opry 100 celebration. Lainey Wilson opened her 2024 album Whirlwind with ‘Keep Up With Jones’, a song packed with references to his music and life, then placed him alongside Jesus and her mama among the things she couldn’t live without in her recent hit ‘Phone, Keys, Wallet’. Zach Top has named Jones as one of his biggest influences.

George Jones wasn’t simply a massive country star. He became the singer other country singers measured themselves against. Both during his lifetime and now.

Speaking during a new episode of Drifting Cowboy, Nancy has recalled the final moments of her husband’s life. George had spent days barely speaking or responding in hospital when, shortly before his death, he suddenly opened his eyes.

“Well, hello there. I’ve been looking for you. My name is George Jones.”

He then closed his eyes and died.

“In my heart, I know he was talking to God,” Nancy said.

It sounds like the final line of a country song.

Nancy has told the story of George’s last words before, so that isn’t new. What is new is the interview and its timing. George would have turned 95 on September 12. The following day, Nancy will host The Possum’s 95th Birthday Celebration at the Nashville Palace, bringing together Jamey Johnson, ERNEST, T. Graham Brown, Lorrie Morgan and Jake Worthington. Money raised will support Concerts 4 A Cause and the George Jones Scholarship at Middle Tennessee State University, where students can take a course studying his life and music.

Nancy met George in 1981. Rather wonderfully, she admits she didn’t even know who he was at the time. She was more interested in Creedence Clearwater Revival than country music. They married in 1983 and remained together until his death in 2013, but Nancy didn’t enter George’s life when it was easy or glamorous. She arrived during one of its darkest periods.

By then, alcohol and cocaine had completely consumed him. He was being arrested, hospitalised and missing so many concerts that his ‘No Show Jones’ moniker became almost as famous as his actual name.

Nancy has never pretended theirs was an easy love story. She has spoken openly about the struggles of living alongside someone with addiction. Still, she spent 32 years trying to save a man who was doing almost everything possible to destroy himself. And Nancy continues to protect and advocate for his legacy.

George was born in rural East Texas in 1931 and grew up in a poor, troubled home with an alcoholic and sometimes violent father. Music became his escape and, as a child, he sang for tips on the streets of Beaumont. His hero was Hank Williams. George once had the opportunity to play guitar in front of Hank during a radio appearance, but became so overwhelmed that he froze. Hank eventually asked whether he was going to play at all. George picked up his guitar and left.

When Williams died in 1953, George was serving in the Marines. He was reportedly so devastated that he remained in his bunk crying. To George Jones, Hank Williams was everyone else’s George Jones.

Once he returned to East Texas, he began working with producer Pappy Daily. His first single, ‘No Money in This Deal’ was recorded in a living room near Beaumont in 1954.

‘Why Baby Why’ gave him his first major hit in 1955, while ‘White Lightning’ became his first No. 1 in 1959. Over the decades, 143 of his singles reached Billboard’s country Top 40, with 13 of them going to Number 1.

Part of George’s power was that the heartbreak never felt borrowed. There were four marriages, addiction, arrests, money problems and relationships damaged beyond repair. When George Jones sang regret, you didn’t have to wonder whether he understood it. You could hear and feel that he did.

By 1980, though, his career was in serious trouble. Then came ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’. George initially wasn’t convinced by the song but it became his first solo No. 1 in six years and it was that recording that returned him back to the centre of country music. It won him a Grammy and CMA Male Vocalist of the Year in both 1980 and 1981.

In 2025, Grand Ole Opry fans voted it the greatest country song of all time.

Perhaps the most interesting connection between George’s life and his final words came in 1999 when he recorded ‘Choices’. It was a song about a man forced to live with the consequences of the life he had led. On March 6 that year, George nearly died while trying to play it.

He was driving his Lexus and attempting to operate the stereo when he became distracted, left the road and crashed into a concrete bridge. He had also been drinking. George had to be cut from the vehicle and his injuries were so serious that Nancy was warned he might not survive. The irony of that Choice doesn’t need explaining.

During his recovery, Nancy recalled hearing him speak to God and promise that, if he survived, he would stop drinking and smoking. There is something of the old crossroads story in that, only in reverse. According to the blues folklore Robert Johnson traded his soul to the Devil for the ability to play guitar – the wish was allegedly granted. George Jones already had the voice, he just needed his soul saving.

At that bridge in 1999, he promised God he would give up the things destroying him if he was allowed to live. He kept the promise. According to Nancy, from the wreck in 1999 until his death in 2013, George never drank again or smoked another cigarette.

So, when Nancy says she believes he was talking to God in his final moments, the connection didn’t begin beside that hospital bed. In 1999, she believed she heard George asking God to let him stay. In 2013, she believed she watched him greet God as he left. His influence on the genre and those within it, though, has never left.

ERNEST and Morgan Wallen’s ‘Flower Shops’ began after ERNEST heard George’s ‘A Good Year for the Roses’ on the way to a writing session, and wanted to find a similarly clever way into a heartbreak song.

Nancy even recently sat down for lunch with ERNEST and Ella Langley, sharing stories and laughing about George. That is why ERNEST appearing at the 95th birthday celebration means more than simply adding a current name to the lineup. The connection to ERNEST continues when earlier this year, he sang ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ at the Grand Ole Opry. During soundcheck, he finished the song and walked around the corner to find Nancy standing there with tears in her eyes. She hugged him and told him the song had always made her cry. ERNEST then had to go out and perform it properly, knowing George Jones’ widow was watching from the side of the stage. No pressure!

George died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on April 26, 2013. He had been preparing for a final concert at Bridgestone Arena that November. Rather than cancelling it, Nashville turned the night into Playin’ Possum: The Final No Show. More than 100 performers took part, including Garth Brooks, George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley and Eric Church. Even Megadeth showed up.

George spent much of his life being looked for. By promoters when he failed to appear, by Nancy when addiction took him somewhere she couldn’t reach and by country music when it feared it might lose the greatest voice it had ever known. But when George Jones needed somebody, people showed up. When his final concert came around, virtually the whole of country music did.

13 years later, it still does. For a man who became almost as famous for not showing up as he did for singing, George Jones has never really left. And country music does what it does best - protects, advocates and loves the family within it.