Johnny Cash had asked June Carter to marry him more than once, and those earlier proposals had reportedly gone nowhere.
On February 22, 1968, in London, Ontario, he asked again, and this time he did it in front of about 7,000 people.
The two of them had just finished singing their duet “Jackson” when he stopped the show. He described the moment on The Mike Douglas Show in 1981.
“I stopped the show and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ on the microphone.”
The fans were stunned, according to Tourism London, though calls of “say yes” could be heard in the crowd. After all those earlier tries, June Carter finally did.
June Carter Said Yes With Her Mother and Sisters Standing on the Stage
June remembered exactly who was standing around her when he asked, and she talked about it in a 1996 TV interview with Nashville broadcaster Karlen Evins.
“I remember the Statler Brothers were on the stage, my mother and my sisters were on the stage, and he asked me in front of all these people. I mean, it was a very formal proposal,” she said.
London had a connection to Johnny Cash. His manager from 1961 to 1973, Saul Holiff, was a former London fruit vendor, and he was the one who recruited June Carter to sing with Cash in 1961. The man who recruited June to sing with Johnny had once sold fruit in the city where she finally said yes.
The timing carried weight too. Five weeks earlier, on January 13, 1968, Cash had recorded At Folsom Prison live, the album that put him back on top of country music that year.
Their Story Began Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956, Twelve Years Before London
The road to London started backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956, when Cash reportedly told June he had always wanted to meet her. She wrote about him in the notes on his 2000 box set, Love, God, Murder.
“I can’t remember anything else we talked about, except his eyes,” she wrote.
June later co-wrote “Ring of Fire” with Merle Kilgore. Anita Carter released it first, and Cash recorded it in 1963, years before he could call June his wife.
For You
Neither of them was free for most of those years. Cash was married to Vivian Liberto, the mother of his four daughters, and June had been married to Carl Smith and then to Edwin “Rip” Nix. Liberto filed for divorce in 1966, and June divorced Nix that same year.
Cash’s pill addiction in the mid-1960s broke up his first marriage, and with June’s help, he overcame it. His oldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, told People in 2019 that the relationship seemed inevitable, though it was painful for her mother. Both sides of that story belong to the family that lived it, and the road to the London stage ran through all of it.
RELATED: Rosanne Cash Opens up About Johnny Cash’s Drug Use and Affair
‘Jackson’ Won Them a Grammy the Day Before Their Wedding
The song they had just finished before he proposed followed them all the way to the altar. Johnny and June won a Grammy for “Jackson,” and the next day, March 1, 1968, they married at a church in Franklin, Kentucky, eight days after London. Cash historian Mark Stielper told WKU Public Radio in 2018 what Johnny said when the award came.
“As John received the award that night, he went up on the stage, and said, ‘This is a fine wedding present,’” Stielper said.
One love song carried them from the question to the wedding in just over a week.
They kept singing together after the wedding, too. They starred in and hosted The Johnny Cash Show on ABC from 1969 to 1971. Their only child together, John Carter Cash, was born in 1970. Years later, in a note he wrote for her 65th birthday, Johnny told June, “You still fascinate and inspire me.”
They were married for 35 years. June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, and Johnny Cash died about four months later.
London, Ontario, has never let that night go. Canada’s first and only UNESCO City of Music marks the proposal with “Johnny & June,” a three-story mural by artist Kevin Ledo on the north side of Canada Life Place.
Nearly six decades after calls of “say yes” could be heard in that crowd, London still keeps Johnny Cash and June Carter on its wall, the couple who got engaged there during a concert on February 22, 1968.
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