Myra with a purse, Bible, and shopping bag, on the tarmac in London, May 9, 1962. This was the couple’s first return to the U.K. after outrage over their marriage forced them to cut short a tour four years earlier.

Myra Lewis Williams: It’s not a story that ever went away. I’m still the 13-year-old child bride. Sometimes I say something about Jerry and people say, “Isn’t he the one married the little girl?” and I say, “Wait a second, you’re talking to the little girl now—be careful what you say.”

There were so many stories told that were not necessarily the truth, or else it was the truth wearing a mask. When all of this hit in London in 1958, it just took the world by storm. It bumped De Gaulle off the front page of the newspaper. They said Jerry played to a half-empty house, and they booed and that kind of stuff, and that was not true. The fans there were so excited to see Jerry that the biggest problem was his safety—Scotland Yard said, “We don’t know how to protect you.” The people were climbing on the buildings, looking through windows trying to find us and we couldn’t go out.

At that time, Elvis had gone into the Army, and Jerry was poised to be the king. All of Jerry’s managers told him, “Do not take Myra to England,” because the British press was known to rip Americans apart—that’s where all the tabloid journalism started. He said, “If Myra doesn’t go, I’m not going.” Everyone underestimated me being aware and possibly knowing what to do. I could so easily have said, “I’m J.W. Brown’s daughter. That’s my little brother, that’s my mother.” Because that was the truth! If anybody had told me anything, I could have prevented this thing. But they didn’t, and I didn’t, and the rest is history, I guess.

In my little mind, I couldn’t believe that they could not see that I was a grown woman. I was only 13, but people said I was more mature than Jerry. I was serious-minded, I was like, “We gotta take care of this and do this,” and he was like, “Where’s the piano?” That’s what he is, that’s what he’s about. And I really, truly wasn’t a typical teenager. My generation was taught to hide under our desk when the bomb came, so you always had in the back of your mind that any minute, any day, life could come to an end. What I wanted was a baby in my arms, a home, a husband, a kitchen to cook in, a yard to raise roses. My little brother was born because I begged my parents for a baby at ten years old. They called me his deputy mom; I just took him over. That was what I was like, and Jerry was busy having fun, he was the true entertainer.

It wasn’t anybody’s business—OK, it was somebody’s business, but it wasn’t everybody’s business. It was my family’s business, it was mine and Jerry’s business. And, OK, if you say to me now, “There’s a 13-year-old girl over here who wants to get married,” I would say “God, please do not do that, little girl. Go to college, get an education, then figure it out.” But it was a different world, things have changed so drastically. Options, mindsets—this world has gone so fast the last fifty years that you can’t keep up with it.

Myra (L) going over scrapbook pictures with her daughter Phoebe in 1989

When we went back home, the whole country was “Shame on you, bad boy.” The other thing we had back then was a hypocritical society. It was “Do as I say, not as I do—and if you get caught, we don’t even know you.” Also, a lot of people took good notes when it happened. Elvis didn’t marry a little 16-year-old girl, did he? Priscilla lived with his grandmother for, what, seven or eight years?

It was something that marked Jerry for life. We kept thinking every year, every six months, that it was going to go away, they’re going to stop talking about it, and it just didn’t happen. But it brought me and Jerry very close, and we had ten incredible, wonderful years together after that. We were like a little camp that had been attacked by the enemy, and we held strong to each other and said, regardless of what they do, we’re going to keep fighting. Jerry’s fame and money went down to almost nothing, it was very turbulent for ten years, but it was the happiest years of our marriage.

I never lost the first name “13-year-old-child-bride-Myra”—I think that’s on my birth certificate now! I don’t think I ever resented it for me, though, I always resented it for what they did to Jerry. It wasn’t harming me, it was harming somebody I loved, that was the pain of it. I was seeing someone punished because of my age, my existence, and I always wanted to just stand up and defend him.