The song was “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife.” Columbia Records released it on January 23, 1970. Four days later, on January 27, Marty Robbins was on an operating table for coronary bypass surgery, a procedure that was still in its experimental stages. He had written the song for Marizona, the woman he married back in Arizona in 1948.
A heart attack at 43
In August 1969, ten years after “El Paso” made him one of the biggest names in country music, Marty Robbins suffered his first heart attack. He was 43. His arteries were blocked, and the operation that would eventually fix them, a coronary bypass, was still experimental.
It was during that recovery that he wrote a song for his wife. Marizona had been with him since long before the Opry, the hits and the race cars.
One account of those weeks, by music writer Michael Jack Kirby, says Marizona drove some 50 miles round trip every day to bring Marty home-cooked meals instead of leaving him to hospital food.
“The things I wanted to say to her”
Marty never made the song sound like more than it was. Asked about it later, he explained that he thought the lines were the things a man would want to say to his wife, and that they were exactly the things he wanted to say to his.
“And my wife is everything I said in the song. It’s a true song.”
Longtime fans sometimes ask how literal that is, because one verse describes a couple losing two babies. According to Marty’s biographer, Diane Diekman, that part is not their story. Marty and Marizona never lost a child, and Diekman did not think Marizona would have wanted to be pictured with the wrinkled hands and gingham dress the song describes. Marty once said he dedicated the song to all the women in the world, because they go through so much.
So the song is two things at once. The details belong to a story. The gratitude belongs to Marizona.
The surgery, and the comeback
The single had only been out a few days when Marty went into surgery on January 27, 1970. The operation worked. He recovered quickly and was back touring about three months later.
By the spring of 1970, “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife” was No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart, his 14th country chart-topper. It also crossed over to No. 42 on the Hot 100, and Dean Martin recorded his own version that same year.
The Grammy that went to the writer
At the 13th Annual Grammy Awards in 1971, the song won Best Country Song. That category honors the songwriter, not the singer, and Marty Robbins had written it alone. The field included Conway Twitty’s “Hello Darlin'” and Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me.”
It was not his first try. A year earlier, Marty had been nominated in the same category for “You Gave Me a Mountain,” and lost to “A Boy Named Sue.” This time, the song he wrote for his own wife took the award.
It was his second Grammy, after “El Paso.” Marty and Marizona stayed married until his death in December 1982, after his third heart attack. She had been there for all three.