Vivian Cash

Vivian Distin ( Liberto, formerly Cash; April 23, 1934 – May 24, 2005) was an American homemaker and author.

She is notable as the first wife of singer Johnny Cash and mother of their four daughters.

She inspired his first hit single "I Walk the Line".

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she grew up in Sicilian-American culture and was raised Catholic.

On July 18, 1951, 17-year-old Vivian met Johnny Cash, an Air Force recruit in basic training, at a roller skating rink in San Antonio, Texas.

The couple courted for three weeks before the Air Force deployed Cash to West Germany for a three-year tour.

During the separation, the couple exchanged thousands of letters.

On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in San Antonio.

The Wedding Mass was offered by Vivian's uncle and Catholic priest, Father Vincent Liberto.

After marrying they settled in Memphis, Tennessee, where Johnny Cash took a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Within the first year of their marriage, Cash had become a rising country music star.

Eventually the couple had four daughters together: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara.

After his rapid success, Cash moved Vivian and their family to Hollywood, where he pursued film roles and entertainment industry connections when he wasn't on tour.

In 1961, Cash moved the family to a hilltop home overlooking Casitas Springs, California.

He had previously brought his parents to the area to run a small trailer park called the Johnny Cash Trailer Park.

As Cash was frequently away from home on tour and the area had no amenities, Vivian and her daughters became increasingly isolated.

Vivian often had to dispatch rattlesnakes and other vermin around the property.

The couple was estranged in 1962.

Following her marriage to Cash in Texas, she was subject to controversy in 1965-1966 related to her racial identity because of publicity after her husband's arrest for drug possession.

White supremacists, judging by her appearance in a widely published photo, claimed that she was black and thus married illegally to her husband.

She and her husband were subject to harassment and he was boycotted for a year in the South before his manager documented her background as white.

In 1965, following wide publicity after he was arrested for drug possession, many people saw photos of Vivian for the first time when she accompanied him to court.

Her appearance was racially ambiguous, and white supremacists accused him of having married a Negro woman, when interracial marriages were still illegal in the South.

They harassed the couple and boycotted the singer in the South.

After the couple divorced in 1966, they each married again.

Cash had chief responsibility for raising their daughters.

They typically spent time in the summer with their father and stepmother, both singer/songwriters.

Liberto later said that she had filed for divorce in 1966 because of Cash's severe drug and alcohol abuse, as well as his constant touring and his repeated acts of adultery with other women.

He had become particularly close with singer June Carter, whom he later married.

Vivian had primary responsibility for the four Cash daughters.

Vivian and Johnny Cash had four daughters, two of whom followed their father into show business: Rosanne became a major singer-songwriter; Kathy, Cindy, who also became a singer-songwriter/author; and Tara.

In 2007 Distin published a memoir, prepared with Ann Sharpsteen, under her former married name of 'Vivian Cash'.

It was based on her years with Johnny Cash and their many letters before their marriage.

Vivian Liberto was born in San Antonio, Texas.

She and her brother Raymond Alvin and sister Sylvia, were the children of Irene (née Robinson), a homemaker, and Thomas Peter Liberto, an insurance salesman and amateur magician.

Her father was of Sicilian descent; his parents had immigrated to New Orleans and then Texas from Cefalù, Palermo, Sicily.

Liberto later used these as the basis for her memoir I Walked the Line (2007).

Her mother was of German and Irish descent; her ancestors had been in Texas since the 19th century.

Vivian and her siblings grew up in Sicilian-American Catholic culture and attended white schools in the segregated state.

After her marriage to Johnny Cash and their move to Memphis, Tennessee, he became increasingly successful as a country music star.