My wife (age 80) has terrible arthritis and no one in her immediate or near family smoked. None of her siblings have arthritis. So far none of our 50+- something DNA pools and nieces and nephews have arthritis.
My mother and her siblings were depression/WWII teens/adults.
They all smoked until their late 20’s, and all of them had severe arthritis which got worse as they aged. They all lived to be 80 something.
So far my cousins,siblings, and I have avoided constant arthritis. We have wear and tear arthritis from basically sports injuries.
Cold weather sets that off, like this morning 55 degrees outside and 65 inside. Voltaren Gel dabbed on and rubbed into the key sore areas, works, when it gets too bad.
I strongly encourage you to look into boron and an eggshell membrane supplement.
For the most severe osteo, patients were given 12 mg/day for two months.
By the 8th week, 75% had quit using pain medicines. By the 4th week, 50% of patients had lost all joint rigidity. More in pages 39-40 in this paper:
http://imjournal.com/openaccess/pizzorno144.pdf
The form of boron in the studies is the one in apples, calcium fructoborate. It is hard to find that form, but it is the sole boron in the only the following supplement:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07B6B4PWQ
One of those pills has 5.5 mg of boron, so two a day would get you 11 mg a day, which is close to the 12 mg a day in the study. The upper tolerable limit for boron is 20 mg a day, so you should do well with it. I take multiple borons getting me to 10+ mg a day.
Also, look into eggshell membrane. It naturally has standard stuff of common Move Free-type supplements, but it has a few other components that appear to go beyond any other similar supplement.
The one I take is this one:
According to the paper, some of the inflammatory activity of rheumatoid arthritis would be lessened with boron and it might help loosen things up for your wife, too.