One of the most aspirational A-list couples of the 20th century was Johnny Cash and June Carter; just take the letter he sent to her on her 65th birthday in 1994, which was later voted the greatest love letter of all time.
Yet their romance began in murky waters, as they were both spoken for when their affair began.
Johnny was married to Vivian Liberto at the time, and they shared four daughters, while June was married to policeman Edwin Nix, and they shared a daughter.
Johnny and June first met in 1956 when he made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, and her first husband, singer Carl Smith, introduced him to the crowd.
“I can’t remember anything else we talked about, except his eyes,” June wrote of their first meeting in the notes on his 2000 box set, Love, God, Murder.
“Those black eyes that shone like agates… He had a command of his performance that I had never seen before.
Just a guitar and a bass and a gentle kind of presence that made not only me, but whole audiences become his followers.”
The duo began touring together in the ’60s, and they slowly developed feelings for each other despite being married to other people.
“I never talked much about how I fell in love with John,” June told Rolling Stone decades later.
“It was not a convenient time for me to fall in love with him, and it wasn’t a convenient time for him to fall in love with me… I was frightened of his way of life. I thought, I can’t fall in love with this man, but it’s just like a ring of fire.”
Eventually, their feelings couldn’t be denied any longer; June and Edwin divorced in 1966, while Johnny and Vivian divorced a year later.
“I should have been relentless at saving [the marriage], as relentless as June was at destroying it,” Vivian wrote in her memoir, I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, about her divorce. “I’d have given anything to hear Johnny say [he was sorry].”
Johnny and June married in 1968 and welcomed their son, John Carter Cash, two years later.
The couple remained by each other’s side until June’s death in May 2003. In a twist of fate, Johnny passed away just four months later.
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