Long before Conway Twitty became one of country music’s most recognizable voices, before “Hello Darlin’,” “It’s Only Make Believe,” the Loretta Lynn duets, and the enormous gates of Twitty City, there was a young woman named Mickey Medley. She knew him before millions of fans did, when he was still fighting to build a career and performing in small clubs with a young band. Their relationship would eventually survive fame, long separations, children, a divorce, and one remarkable decision to try marriage all over again.
Mickey later told the story herself in a 1978 Billboard feature titled “Living With Conway.” She remembered meeting Conway in 1956 while she was attending cosmetology school in Helena, Arkansas. Her first impression was hardly romantic. Mickey thought he was arrogant because he seemed to turn his nose up around her, only to discover later that he had actually been watching her and was trying not to reveal how interested he was.
By their second date, Mickey went to see him perform. Conway had recently returned from military service, formed a band called the Rockhousers, and was playing the new rock-and-roll music spreading across America. Mickey admitted she was unfamiliar with that world and was not even an Elvis Presley fan, but something about Conway himself mattered more than the music. Their relationship developed quickly, and they married during the early period of his career.
Nothing about their first years together resembled the glamorous country-star life that would eventually surround them. Conway was still Harold Lloyd Jenkins to much of the world, trying to turn talent into enough income to support a family. Mickey had never been around entertainers and later admitted that adjusting to the music business was difficult. She was learning what it meant to share a husband with clubs, promoters, recording sessions, fans, and endless miles on the road while also raising children at home.
Then Conway’s career exploded.
His 1958 recording of “It’s Only Make Believe” became an international hit, reportedly topping charts in numerous countries and selling millions of copies. Suddenly the young musician playing small clubs was a rock-and-roll star, and the ordinary marriage Mickey had entered was being pulled into a life neither of them had experienced before.
Mickey later spoke candidly about how difficult those years could be. Conway was traveling and experiencing the excitement of finally achieving his dream, while she was often at home with their children. She admitted that there were times she felt trapped and lonely, even while understanding how important the career was to him. The problem was not necessarily a lack of love; it was that success had created two completely different daily realities for husband and wife.
They kept trying to adjust.
Their family grew to include three children together, Kathy, Joni Lee, and Jimmy, and Conway eventually made one of the most important professional decisions of his life. Although he had found success in rock and roll, country music was where he truly wanted to be. His official biography recalls a moment when he looked out at another crowd of young rock fans and realized that, with a wife and three children waiting at home, he wanted something different from his career. He walked away from that chapter and began the transition that would make Conway Twitty a country legend.
But professional reinvention did not make marriage easier.
Conway’s country career became even larger than the rock career he had left behind. Beginning with “Next in Line” in 1968, the No. 1 records came rapidly. Touring remained constant, and the demands of fame continued to place enormous pressure on family life.
By early 1970, Conway and Mickey reached a breaking point and divorced.
For most couples, that would have been the end of the story.
For them, it was not.
Before 1970 was over, they had quietly remarried. The woman who had lived through the lean years, the first wave of fame, and the difficult transition into country music decided to try again with the man she had already divorced.
That second chance is what makes their story so unusual.
It would be easy to romanticize the reunion as proof that love solved everything, but Mickey’s own account was more realistic. Marriage to an entertainer still required constant adjustment, and Conway’s career did not suddenly become less demanding. Instead, they seemed to recognize that whatever had driven them apart had not completely erased the attachment that had kept them together through so much change.
By 1978, more than two decades after they met, Mickey could still describe their relationship warmly. She acknowledged the difficulty of being married to a star but also emphasized the understanding that had developed between them. They had experienced Conway as a struggling musician, a rock-and-roll sensation, and finally one of country music’s biggest stars, yet Mickey remained connected to the life that existed behind all three versions of him.
Their shared world eventually became visible to fans in an extraordinary way.
In 1982, Conway opened Twitty City in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The tourist complex included his mansion with Mickey, homes belonging to family members, business offices, exhibits, landscaped grounds, and areas where fans could experience a carefully constructed version of Conway’s world. Hundreds of thousands of people eventually passed through the property.
Yet even Twitty City could not solve the pressures that had followed their marriage for years.
By the mid-1980s, Conway and Mickey separated for the final time. Accounts of their marriage point again to the strain created by Conway’s frequent absences and demanding career. Their relationship had survived one divorce and one unexpected reunion, but the second marriage ultimately could not survive indefinitely.
Conway later married Dee Henry in 1987, and she remained his wife until his sudden death in 1993. Mickey went on to live a far more private life, passing away in 2021. Their romantic story did not receive the perfect ending fans might expect from a country song, but perhaps that is precisely why it remains interesting.
Mickey had known Conway before the myth.
She saw the young musician before the No. 1 records, watched him become a rock star, raised children while he crossed America, survived the transition into country music, left when the marriage became too difficult, and then chose to return once because neither of them was ready to let the story end.
Before the world knew Conway Twitty, Mickey Medley knew Harold Jenkins.
And for nearly three decades, on and off, their lives kept finding their way back to each other.