Johnny Cash Wrote This Love Letter To June Carter For Her 65th Birthday, And It’ll Make You Weep
There are painfully few real, lasting love stories in showbiz. In fact, celebrity couplings often seem to end in divorce, heartbreak, and a protracted lawsuit. But country music legends Johnny Cash and June Carter definitely bucked that trend. And even now, they serve as a touching reminder to the world that love really can last if you work hard at it. Indeed, one letter that Cash sent to Carter in 1994 proves that the Man in Black wasn’t just an amazing singer and songwriter, but that he was also a deeply romantic soul.
Revelations from the Cash family
The letter is enough to reduce even the most hard-hearted person to tears. And while it may have been written in 1994, it didn’t come to public attention until a good few years later. Specifically, it appeared in the 2011 book House of Cash, which was penned by the person who knew the couple best: their son John. Telling their full story wasn't so easy, however.
Not your average romance
The Carter-Cash love saga is so complex and chaotic it could almost have come from the pages of a novel. The pair first set eyes on each other in 1956 at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. On this particular evening, June Carter was performing as a backup singer for rock ‘n’ roll legend Elvis Presley.
A broken marriage
And while the two fell in love instantly, there was just one problem: Cash already had a wife, Vivian Liberto. Needless to say, then, that Liberto was the one who lost out in this scenario. What’s more, she blamed Carter for breaking up the marriage. “I should have been relentless at saving it,” Liberto wrote in her 2005 autobiography I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, “as relentless as June was at destroying it.”
The inspiration behind "Ring of Fire"
Furthermore, Carter’s feelings for Cash ended up sparking one of the greatest country songs of all time in “Ring of Fire.” And in its lyrics, Carter quite dramatically described her emotions toward the still-married object of her affections. She explained to CMT in 2003, “I’m in a ring of fire... It’s going to kill me, because I would never have the nerve to tell him, nor do I want to tell him, nor do I want anybody to even know I’ve got these feelings.”
