June Carter first met Johnny Cash while performing with her mother and sisters as the Carter Family. Though Carter and Cash were both involved with other people, they were also deeply attracted to one another. Indeed June, fearful of Cash's powerful allure, channeled her feelings into the song "Ring of Fire" (written with country star Merle Kilgore). "I was frightened of his way of life," she recalled. "So I thought, 'I can't fall in love with this man, but it's just like a ring of fire.' I wanted to play that song for John, but I knew he would see right through me. So I gave it to my sister Anita, and she recorded it -- her version was like a folk song, like bells ringing in the mountains. When John heard it, he said, 'I want to do that song.'"

Several years later, Cash married Carter and, presumably, was surprised to learn that "that song" had in fact been written for him.

(In 2004, the Cash family blocked an attempt by advertisers to use the classic song -- in an advertising campaign promoting haemorrhoid-relief products!)

["I first laid eyes on June Carter when I was eighteen, on a Dyess High School senior class trip to the Grand Ole Opry," Cash once recalled. "I liked what I heard of her on the radio, and I really liked what I saw of her from the balcony at the Ryman Auditorium. The next time I saw her was six years later again at the Opry, but this time backstage, because by then I was a performer too. I walked over to her and came right out with it: 'You and I are going to get married some day.'"]

[Johnny Cash struggled with addiction and suicide (in 1967, he crawled into a cave in the Tennessee mountains planning to die). He later paid tribute to June Carter's "lifelong dedication to cleaning me up."]