Myra Williams says that she found out Lewis had passed away through their daughter.
The career of Jerry Lee Lewis, who died last week at 87, slammed to a halt after marrying his underage cousin. Now 78, Myra Williams is speaking out to Inside Edition.
In 1957, Williams was only 13 years old when she married Lewis, then 22. The press had a field day, denouncing Lewis as a "baby snatcher.”
“It became romantic when Jerry was at our house, and he would ask me if I wanted to go somewhere, like to the Dairy Queen and get an ice cream or something like that. And he would just be silly with me, and then he started kissing me,” Williams tells Inside Edition.
The uproar over their marriage was the center of the 1989 film “Great Balls of Fire" starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder.
“They made Jerry look like a moron, and made me look just like a bubblegum-chewing kid with no brain,” Williams said.
After 13 years of marriage and two children, Lewis’s substance abuse took its toll and the couple divorced.
Williams says that she found out Lewis had passed away through their daughter. She says she wants to remember him “alive and playing ‘Great Balls of Fire.’”
