This is by Jim Macaulay.
John was definitely an alcoholic. His wife, Nancy, constantly begged and harassed him to stop drinking. “If you don’t quit drinking,” she said to him, “you are going to wind up with the undertaker.”
In other words, John was putting the quart before the hearse.
Howell Gwin added:
And then there’s the coed who eloped. She put the heart before the course.