Loretta Lynn Once Revealed How Her Husband Felt About Being Portrayed as a Cheater in Her Songs
Country music star Loretta Lynn detailed her experiences as a young wife, mother, and famous musician through her lyrics. And she didn’t shy away from talking about her sometimes rocky relationship with her late husband, Oliver, whom one might think was a cheater based on her songs.
Some people might be curious about how Oliver received her less flattering depictions of him, considering they remained married. Lucky for those interested people, Lynn once revealed the answer. And she also explained why she thought he was responsible for “everything” they had, despite her natural, bankable talent.
Some songs by Loretta Lynn implied her husband was a cheater
Considering Loretta and Oliver Lynn were married, some listeners assumed many of her songs were about life with him. And some of those tunes didn’t portray him as a faithful husband.
For example, in “Cheatin’ on a Cheater,” she sang, “How long did you think that you could get by and not give yourself away / Cause all of the stories you were tellin’ me got weaker baby day by day / I was a fool for a long, long time, but I finally got wise to you.”
Other songs, like “Fist City,” are responses to individuals “making [their] brags around town” to have been intimate with Oliver. “I’m not a’ sayin’ my baby’s a saint, ’cause he ain’t / And that he won’t cat around with a kitty / I’m here to tell you gal to lay off my man / If you don’t want to go to fist city,” Lynn wrote.
We have to agree that those don’t leave Oliver standing in the best light. So, how did he feel about such songs?
Loretta Lynn said her husband didn’t mind being portrayed as a cheater for 1 good reason
According to Lynn, Oliver didn’t mind her airing out their dirty laundry in songs, partly because she was so good at doing it. As such, she began to amass an impressive net worth — something they enjoyed together.
“He’d take the money the songs would make and run all the way to the bank,” Lynn once told People, “so he was happy!”
Loretta Lynn was married to her husband for almost 50 years before he died
The Grammy-winning country star wrote about her marriage in her autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, giving Oliver, whom she called “Doolittle,” credit for her success. According to her, “there would be no career” without him.
“I wouldn’t have started singing in the first place,” she wrote, “and I wouldn’t have had the inspiration for some of my best songs, in the second place.”
She added, “So in a real sense, Doolittle is responsible for everything we got.”
Lynn said Oliver was a good husband “in most ways,” though she noted, “I don’t want to say he’s never fooled around, or gotten drunk, or whipped me into line a little, because that ain’t the truth. There were plenty of bad moments in our marriage …”
Oliver died in 1996 after 48 years of marriage. At the end of his life, he claimed to Lynn that he’d always been faithful, though she might not have been convinced of the truth in that unbelievable deathbed confession. Nevertheless, she told People that though they had “little fights,” he always “meant everything to [her],” adding, “Still does.”
Loretta Lynn survived for more than 26 years after Oliver died but never remarried before her death in 2022.
