She was with Lewis on his 1958 tour of England, hoping to expand his fan base, when a British reporter asked who she was. “I was the one who let the big ol’ cat out of the bag,” she told Cuepoint.

Once the tabloids had the story, they didn’t let it go. The furor grew even worse once it was disclosed that not only had Lewis married a 13-year old, she was also his second cousin on his mother’s side and the daughter of his bass player. Add to that the fact that Lewis was still legally married to his second wife and the story soon became infamous.

As Cuepoint described it, it was exceptionally bad timing for Lewis, who’d been perfectly positioned to ascend to the top of the charts following Elvis Presley’s draft into the army. Remarkably, the couple managed to remain married for a time and had two children (tragically, their son died as a toddler). As the Daily Press characterized it in 1989, however, those remaining 13 years were marked by “the terrors of [Lewis’s] alcohol and drug abuse.” In the years following the incident, Lewis again found some success, relates Live About — this time as a country performer. Perhaps surprisingly, Williams and Lewis remained in contact, and despite the turmoil, Williams appears surprisingly resilient, sharing that the aftermath of that life-changing moment “wasn’t harming me, it was harming somebody I loved, that was the pain of it.”