After more than fifty years of silence, Temple Medley—known to fans as Mickey Jenkins, the first and only wife of the legendary country music icon Conway Twitty—has at last broken her silence. Now 82 years old, Mickey has stepped forward to share an intimately emotional account of their marriage, the reasons behind their divorce, and the enduring bond that neither time nor circumstance could sever. She also revealed why she chose never to remarry, providing a rare glimpse into a chapter of Conway Twitty’s life long overshadowed by fame and myth.
For decades, while Conway rose from a rock ’n’ roll heartthrob to a household name in country music, Mickey remained largely unseen, a quiet presence woven into the fabric of his story yet seldom spoken about, even among those closest to him. In a recently released, quietly recorded interview circulated by family friends, Mickey’s voice carries the poignant weight of years passed, speaking with tenderness, reverence, and clarity.
“I never stopped loving him,”
she confesses softly.
“But sometimes love isn’t enough to survive the world that comes with it.”
Married young—and long before hits like “Hello Darlin’” and “It’s Only Make Believe” catapulted Conway to superstardom—the couple built a family from scratch, raising four children amidst the hardships of early life. Those early lean years were marked by tight finances and unfulfilled dreams, but also by a partnership forged through hardship and hope. As Conway’s career accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s, his obligations to the limelight increased, pulling him further from the home he had once shared so fully with Mickey.
“I used to wait up for him,”
she recalls, the crack in her voice betraying the loneliness of those nights.
“Some nights, he came home so tired he couldn’t speak. Other nights, he couldn’t come home at all.”
By the late 1970s, the widening gulf between them had taken an irreversible toll. Conway’s transformation into a figure of mythic public admiration left Mickey feeling consigned to the shadows, her role shrinking from partner to mere footnote in a legend. Their divorce, though finalized quietly and without public scandal, was deeply painful and left Mickey with a mix of heartbreak and acceptance.
“People always ask why I never remarried,”
she says, pausing with a long, reflective breath.
“Because once you’ve loved someone that deeply, you don’t start over. You just keep loving them differently.”
There is no bitterness in Mickey’s words—only profound reflection and a graceful acknowledgment of the complexities of a marriage that survived love’s many tests but could not survive the demands of fame. She speaks tenderly not just of the man the world adored, but of the husband she truly knew—gentle yet conflicted, devoted to his music but haunted by an isolating loneliness.
“When he sang ‘I’d Love to Lay You Down,’ I knew that part of him still longed for home,”
she shares, voice tinged with wistfulness.
“But the stage became his home. And I had to let him go.”
Today, Temple Medley’s voice offers the missing half of Conway Twitty’s story—the dimension of deep love that inspired his greatest songs, the heartbreak that shaped the soul behind his music, and a quiet loyalty that never faltered even after their separation. Her words resonate not just as a personal testament but as a profound complement to the legacy of a man both revered and misunderstood.
“He was my first everything,”
she concludes with enduring warmth.
“And in some ways, he still is.”
For millions who grew up listening to Conway Twitty, Mickey’s revelation adds a heartfelt final verse to the ballad of his life—not one of fame, drama, or failure, but of a love that transcended all else, quietly outlasting time itself.
Video
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d7FspsAHqfQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed
