As a singer, she placed 30 singles on the Billboard country songs chart, was a Grand Ole Opry member and was nominated for several major awards.

She also started writing poems and short stories, and remained active in other ways, including regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry.

[1] "My body was violated and my mind was damaged in a way I wasn't to know the full extent of for years to come," she wrote in her 1987 autobiography.

[17] Wood then dropped out of college but found a job as a public school teacher in the rural farm community of Dora, Missouri.

[22][3] Smith moved Lula and her children into local military housing and got a job in the "tea room" of the Morehouse Fashion Department Store.

[36] Her recent success prompted Joe Johnson to release a solo single by called "The One You Slip Around With" (penned by Harlan Howard and Fuzzy Owen).

[12] Jan and Stewart then embarked on a three-day tour in Lubbock, Texas and an appearance on the Town Hall Party California television program.

She then started appearing on package shows alongside June Carter, Skeeter Davis, George Jones, Buck Owens, and Faron Young.

[48] The Howard's also started their own publishing company called Wilderness Music and set up a Nashville office during this period.

[38] According to Jan, Bradley had a hard time separating her musical style from her Decca counterparts (Brenda Lee and Loretta Lynn) which caused her follow-up singles to fail.

In 1966, she played a package tour that ended at California's Hollywood Bowl and another in Detroit, Michigan that attracted roughly 24,000 people.

[55] Decca also continued recording Jan. She became increasingly identified with songs portraying women in assertive roles and occasionally featured lyrics by her husband.

[12] Other recordings with similar assertive themes included the 1967 US top country 40 songs "Any Old Way You Do" (penned by Howard) and "Roll Over and Play Dead".

The pair garnered positive audience reception when singing duets on tour, which prompted them to approach Owen Bradley about recording together.

[60] Working with Anderson provided Jan with a steady source of income[61] following her divorce from Harlan Howard in the late 1960s.

[67] The Anderson-Howard duet pairing continued simultaneously[63] and resulted in the three more top ten US and Canadian country singles through 1972: "If It's All the Same to You" (1970), "Someday We'll Be Together" (1970) and "Dis-Satisfied" (1972).

[76] Howard was then approached by Pete Drake to be part of a veteran's era album project called Stars of the Grand Ole Opry.

[81][83] In the 2000s, Howard was inducted into the Missouri Country Music Hall of Fame and released a boxed set of her recorded material.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic spoke of her singing style in his review of The Very Best of Wynn Stewart and Jan Howard CD in 2004.

"Howard is a strong,, straight-ahead, hardcore country singer, and the sides collected here are excellent, unheralded pure honky-tonk with a Bakersfield tinge.

"[89] Robert K. Oermann commented on Howard's "brassy" singing style and noted that her Decca recordings were "downright gutsy", "sassy" and "self-assured.

One of her first released compositions was "Crying for Love", which appeared on her 1966 studio album Jan Howard Sings Evil on Your Mind.

Self-penned songs appeared on the studio albums For God and Country,[94] Love Is Like a Spinning Wheel,[95] Sincerely, Jan Howard[96] and Stars of the Grand Ole Opry.

[99] Her last writing credit is on the track, "My Friend", a song that appeared on Howard's 1983 studio album Tainted Love.

"[104] In the late 1970s, Howard obtained her real estate license for a local company in Hendersonville, Tennessee, called Lakeside Realtors.

[124] Prior to this, he had been employed at the Opryland USA theme park, where he appeared as an actor in several shows, including a major role in the cast of the play I Hear America Singing.

[125] Howard then began noticing changes in his behavior, including coming home late at night and having symptoms of depression.

[128] In the years following David and Jimmy's deaths, Howard's middle son Carter began working with military veterans.

Doctors told her, after giving birth to a stillborn baby and a previous operation, Howard had a strong possibility of developing cancer if she did not have her uterus removed.

Howard underwent surgery at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, and within three weeks was back to a normal routine.