Love triangles are messy enough on their own, but a love triangle among three musicians becomes downright soap-opera-worthy. Add in a familial bond, and the story begins to border on a crass joke about Tennesseans and their kin. Yet in 1968, this was the all-too-serious reality of Johnny Cash, June Carter, and Anita Carter.
Johnny and June are regarded as the quintessential country music couple today. But their journey to marriage was not a smooth one. The pair met and began collaborating while they were married to other people. This inevitably led to arguments between each other and their respective spouses. But perhaps the most surprising “other woman” in this scenario was June’s younger sister, Anita.
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There Were Two Carter Sisters on Johnny Cash’s Mind
When Johnny Cash first broke onto the scene, he was married to a woman named Vivian Liberto—the romantic inspiration behind his first big hit, “I Walk The Line”. As Cash began performing more frequently with June Carter and the rest of the Carter family, rumors began swirling about whether Cash was roaming from Liberto while he was alone with June on the road. Sometimes, Cash’s colleagues caught him looking elsewhere from June, too.
In Robert Hilburn’s Johnny Cash: The Life, the biographer describes a recording session with Cash, bassist Marshall Grant, and Anita Carter. Grant recalled Cash mentioning that Anita was “one beautiful woman.” Grant then asked Cash if “Vivian was now going to have to worry about two Carter sisters.”
Of course, Cash would only pop the question to one woman. (At a time, anyway. Post-Vivian but pre-June, he proposed to Billie Jean Horton, who turned him down.) When Cash asked June to marry him, Hillburn cited a “Cash confidant” who claimed “four women were shocked” by Cash’s proposal. According to this anonymous source, one of those shocked women was June’s sister, Anita, who thought the singer-songwriter would propose to her instead.
The Mess Didn’t Really Stop There, Either
Unfortunately, the messy love triangle between Johnny Cash, June Carter, and Anita Carter did not evaporate the day that Johnny and June were wed in an early March ceremony in Kentucky. This ring, er, triangle of fire flared up multiple times following the wedding, including when June was pregnant with the couple’s first son in 1969. During this time, June discovered John was having an affair with Anita.
As rocky as Johnny and June’s relationship was in its earliest years, the Man in Black eventually got his act together. In his 1975 autobiography, Cash wrote a letter to himself during that time: “You did all right in a lot of ways. You blew it in others… You stayed off pills. But you’re still awfully carnal. You know what those little vices of yours are. Get to work on them before they multiply and lower your resistance to other temptations, like pills, for instance.”
“Big deals ahead in 1969, possibly a network TV show,” Cash continued. “But the biggest deal you’ve got is your family and home. You’d better hang with God if you want the other deals to work out. Your friend, Cash.”
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