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Vivian Liberto (April 23, 1934 – May 24, 2005) was the first wife of country singer Johnny Cash.

Liberto met Johnny Cash in 1950 at a roller skating rink in San Antonio, Texas three weeks before the Air Force deployed him to Germany. At the time, she was still a senior at Providence High School, an all-girl Catholic school in San Antonio. During Cash's military tour overseas, the couple wrote each other over 10,000 pages of love letters.

On July 3, 1954, Cash was discharged from the Air Force. On August 7, 1954, the two were married. A brief portrait of their marriage and early life is provided in the poignant song "I Was Watching You" by their eldest child, Rosanne Cash, from her 2006 album Black Cadillac.

Vivian and Johnny were married until 1966, before his addiction to amphetamines and occasional womanizing led them to a divorce. She married Dick Distin that same year. Johnny Cash married June Carter in 1968.

In 2004, Vivian fought to get a memento of her romance with Johnny, who died in 2003 — a bench into which Cash had carved the words "Johnny Loves Vivian" in 1951. San Antonio city officials declined her request, and promptly placed the bench under lock and key in a storage facility.

She died on May 24, 2005, of complications from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71; on the same day as her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.

She was portrayed by Ginnifer Goodwin in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. According to Kathleen Cash, one of Vivian's daughters, the portrayal was inaccurate and unfair to her mother. John Carter Cash, Kathleen's half-brother and executive producer of the film, responded that he understood her concerns.^[1]

Cash-Distin's memoirs, entitled "I Walked the Line: My Life With Johnny," will be posthumously released by Scribner's in September of 2007.

1. ^ "Johnny Cash film angers daughter", BBC News, 11 November 2005.