Joyce Milsap, Wife and Song Vetter to Country Star Ronnie Milsap, Dies at 81

variety.com:

Chris Willman Music WriterJoyce Reeves Milsap, the wife of country star Ronnie Milsap, died Tuesday at age 81. No cause of death was immediately given.The couple wed in 1965, more than a decade before the singer came to prominence, and were often characterized as joined at the hip as he rose to become one of country’s biggest stars in the ’70s and ’80s.

Country music fans and experts often spoke of Ronnie and “Joycie’s” relationship in the same terms as a Johnny-and-June. The couple’s 56th wedding anniversary would have been Oct.

30.“I always thought of them as a duo,” said former Sony Nashville chairman Joe Galante, famously a champion of Ronnie Milsap over the decades. “Even though it was always the dynamic Ronnie Milsap, Joyce was.