Virginia Wynette Pugh was born on the 5th May 1942, in Tremont, Mississippi USA, and was a Grammy Award-winning country musician and songwriter, known for being the biggest-selling country female musician ever – she featured 20 No. 1 hit singles including “Singing My Song”, “Take Me to Your World”, “The Ways to Love a Man” and probably her best known song “Stand By Your Man”. Apart from music, Tammy was also widely known for her stormy marriage with country musician George Jones. Tammy Wynette passed away in April 1998.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth the “First Lady of Country Music” accumulated for life? How rich would Tammy Wynette be nowadays? According to sources, it is estimated that the total size of Tammy Wynette’s net worth, as of early 2017, would be around $900,000 – the sum earned thanks to the huge commercial success of her 42 studio albums.
Tammy Wynette Net Worth $900,000
Tammy was the only child of school teacher, Mildred Faye and a local musician and farmer William Hollice Pugh; after his death when she was only nine months old, Tammy was sent to her maternal grandparents, while her mother worked in a defense plant during WWII. While growing up, Tammy self-taught to play several of her late father’s instruments, and that’s when she developed her interest in music. She attended Tremont High School, where she showed a promising talent as a basketball player. However, at the age of 17, she married an itinerant carpenter, Euple Byrd with whom, during their five year-long rocky marriage, she had three daughters. Due to a heavy financial burden as well as her youngest daughter’s spinal meningitis, Tammy was forced to do a series of odd jobs including working as a receptionist, waitress, barmaid and a shoe maker before gaining a cosmetology license. In 1964, she left her husband and moved to Nashville, Tennessee with her daughters.
Tammy’s music career officially began in 1966 when she signed a record deal with Epic Records. Her debut single “Apartment No. 9” was warmly received, while her second one “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” was a huge commercial success, peaking at No. 3 on the Country charts. In 1967, Tammy was honored with the prestigious Grammy Award in the category of Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her hit single “I Don’t Wanna Play House”. Throughout the rest of the 1960s and 1970s, Tammy continued to release studio albums featuring critically and commercially acclaimed hit singles and won the Country Music Association Award two times in a row, in 1969 and 1970. By the end of the 1970s, she had released 21 studio albums featuring numerous songs of which only three did not reach the Top 10 on the various Country music charts. It is certain that all these accomplishments as well as hit singles such as “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “Stand by Your Man” dramatically increased the overall revenues of Tammy Wynette in that period.
In 1979, Tammy released her autobiography book “Stand by Your Man”., and in 1981 an eponymous movie was aired. Despite releasing several critically acclaimed albums in the 1980s, Tammy’s commercial success began to wane, and by the end of 1988 she was forced to declare bankruptcy. She also began suffering from severe medical conditions, but continued to sing and perform as well as to release new albums. After collaborating with popular British electronic band The KLF in 1991 and releasing the single “Justified and Ancient (Stand by the JAMs)” her popularity began to rise again. Doubtlessly, all these “ventures” made an impact on the total size of Tammy Wynette’s wealth.
Apart from her music career, Tammy had also made some efforts towards acting – in 1986 she appeared in the CBS soap opera “Capitol”, while in 1996 she voice acted in one episode of “Married… with Children”. She also voice acted for the animated sitcom “King of the Hill”.
In her music career, which tragically ended with her sudden death, Tammy Wynette released 42 studio albums and 16 compilation albums, featuring 79 singles of which 20 peaked at No. 1 on worldwide music charts. All these accomplishments added a significant sum to Tammy Wynette’s net worth.
When it comes to her personal life, Tammy was married five times. Apart from her first marriage already mentioned above, between 1967 and 1968 she was married to Lloyd Franklin Amburgey, and between 1969 and 1975, the famous country musician George Jones was her husband with whom she had another daughter. In 1976 she was married for only 44 days to Michael Tomlin, and from 1978 ’til her death, Tammy was married to producer and songwriter George Richey.
Tammy Wynette passed away on the 6th April 1998, sleeping on a couch in her home in Nashville, Tennessee. Although it was thought that she died because of a blood clot in her lungs, after her body was exhumed in 1999, it was announced that she died of cardiac arrhythmia.
