Jerry Lee Lewis Married His 13-Year-Old Cousin. Here's Her Side

London, May 22, 1958. The hottest new star in rock and roll walks off a plane at Heathrow, and a reporter asks the girl behind him who she is. "I'm Jerry's wife," she says. Jerry Lee Lewis tells him she is 15. She is 13. She is his cousin. And he is still legally married to someone else. Within a week the tour is over. This is the record of Myra Gale Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis, told from her side. The Pentecostal boy from Ferriday, Louisiana, whose parents mortgaged the farm for a piano. The two earlier marriages, one of them never legal. The cousin's house in Memphis he moved into when she was 12. The wedding in Hernando, Mississippi, on December 12, 1957, with a license she says a friend obtained by posing as her. The three concerts in England and the Billboard apology that followed. A son born when she was 14 and drowned at 3. The divorce filing in 1970, with its sworn line about every kind of abuse. The detective she hired to get out. And what happened to the people around him after she left: the bass player he shot, the gates of Graceland, two wives who died before their divorces were final. We also follow what Myra did with her own story, from a book sold under his name to the memoir she finally published at 71. If you want the record behind more of the legends you grew up with, subscribe. If this one changed how you see him, leave a like. And tell me in the comments, where are you watching from? Sources include Myra Lewis Williams's own accounts, including The Spark That Survived (2016); Rick Bragg, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story (2014); Billboard, June 9, 1958; and contemporary press. Film from the Prelinger Archives. Images from the Library of Congress, the Memphis Police Department and Wikimedia Commons contributors. #jerryleelewis #myragalebrown #sunrecords #rockandroll #musichistory #theprivaterecord