Tammy Wynette was born Virginia Wynette Pugh on her family's cotton farm in Itawamba County, Mississippi in 1942, per AllMusic. Her father died of a brain tumor when she was less than a year old and her mother moved to Birmingham, Alabama to find work, leaving Pugh in the care of her grandparents. By the age of seven she was working alongside her family picking cotton, a story she would later honor by "keep[ing] a crystal bowl full of cotton in her home to remind her of these meager beginnings," according to her official website. Her father had been an amateur musician who played piano and guitar; she taught herself to play the instruments he had left behind, dreaming of escaping the constant, backbreaking toil of working on a farm.
She married her first husband, Euple Byrd, at the age of 17 and had her first two children, Gwendolyn and Jacqueline, within three years. Living conditions were "even harder than she'd known at home," with her husband often unemployed and their home an "abandoned log house with no indoor plumbing." According to People magazine, Wynette said the stress caused her to have an emotional breakdown, which was treated with electroshock therapy. Later discussing the treatments, Tammy Wynette said: "they were horrible, but they helped me."
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