How a Magazine Ad Inspired This Big Marty Robbins Hit

In 1958, Marty Robbins had a hit single with “Just Married”. His fifth No. 1 single, “Just Married”, also hit the Top 30 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart. 

Before releasing “Just Married”, Robbins released “The Story Of My Life”. Both that song and the three singles after “Just Married” were all part of Marty’s Greatest Hits, Robbins’ first compilation record. So it’s interesting that “Just Married” did not appear on Marty’s Greatest Hits, or any record at all. Still, that had little impact on the song’s success.

Written by Barry De Vorzon and Al Allen, “Just Married” is actually a sad song, which says in part, “‘Just Married’ written on / The window of their car / It broke my heart / To see them drive away / I lost the one I love today.”

De Vorzon later revealed it was a magazine ad that inspired him to write “Just Married”.

“I’m reading a magazine, and I see this car in an ad, a magazine ad, with the tin cans tied to the back bumper,” De Vorzon told The Tennessean. “And on the back window, it says, ‘Just Married.’ I said, ‘There’s my hook.’ ‘Just Married’ was the name of the song.”

How Barry De Vorzon Got “Just Married” to Marty Robbins

As soon as De Vorzon finished “Just Married”, he thought of Robbins. Unfortunately, De Vorzon had no idea how to get it to the country singer.

“I was that young and that naive, and I was in another publisher’s office, and he got up to go to the bathroom,” De Vorzon remembered. “I looked on his desk, and [there were] all these record companies with their addresses and phone numbers, and I knew that Marty recorded for Columbia. So I went over there, quickly wrote down all the information. I put it in my pocket.”

De Vorzon mailed “Just Married” to Mitch Miller, who was the head of Columbia Records, Robbins’ label, at the time. Even more surprising, it actually worked, although no one was more surprised than De Vorzon.

“One night I came home from pounding the pavement, and I was living with my aunt,” he recounts. “That’s how poor I was. And she says, ‘Barry, Barry! A Mr. Mitch Miller has been trying to reach you.’ I said, ‘Mitch Miller? Oh my God.’”

De Vorzon went on to have a successful career as a songwriter. Still, nothing will ever compare to the moment he found out Robbins recorded “Just Married”.

“To this day, that will be one of the greatest moments in my life,” De Vorzon says. “I’m a starving songwriter; I wrote a song for a big country star, and the President of Columbia tells me that he recorded it.”

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images