In the 1950s, June Carter listened as her touring partner, a man by the name of Elvis Presley, blasted Johnny Cash’s “Cry, Cry, Cry” over a jukebox. “Somehow, this low voice just penetrated my heart and spoke to my loneliness,” Carter later said. The pair were still married to other people when they later met in person at the Grand Ole Opry. But the die of fate had been cast, and on this day (March 1) in 1968, Johnny Cash and June Carter tied the knot inside the First United Methodist Church in Franklin, Kentucky.
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Johnny Cash Proposed to His Wife in Front of 7,000 People
Just one day before their nuptials, the couple had won a Grammy Award for Best Country Duet for their song “Jackson.” As he accepted the trophy, Johnny Cash quipped, “This is a fine wedding present.”
Just days earlier, before a crowd of 7,000 crammed into the London Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada, Johnny Cash had gazed into his future wife’s eyes and posed the same question he’d been asking for years.
“June, will you marry me?” said the “Folsom Prison Blues” singer.
This time, the answer was different. “It scared me to death,” June later recalled. “I kept saying, ‘Shut up.’ And my mother was there, my sisters and the Statler Brothers, and they kept laughing at me. And I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say, and he just stood there and looked at me and grinned until I said something.”
June finally replied. “Yes. Okay next song,” she said according to the couple’s 1981 appearance on The Mike Douglas Show.
At the time, Tennessee had a mandatory three-day waiting period for couples looking to get married. Since Kentucky had no such law, Johnny and June Carter Cash headed to Franklin, the first town north of the Tennessee line on I-65.
“The wedding ceremony was very short, less than five minutes long. It did not feature guitars or country music singing,” explained Mark Stielper, historian and Cash’s longtime friend. “It was quiet, very emotional. Both John and June cried during the ceremony.”
[RELATED: The Johnny Cash Quote That Proves He and June Carter Were Relationship Goals]
They Were Together For 35 Years
By all accounts, Johnny and June Carter Cash remained devoted to one another for the rest of their lives. June died on May 15, 2003, at age 73. Her husband followed four months later on Sept. 12. He was 71 years old.
“Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit,” Cash wrote in a letter to his wife on her 65th birthday. “Maybe sometimes we take each other for granted. But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.”
Featured image by Ley, Charlie/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
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