June Carter Cash was born on this day 86 years ago. Here she is in 1985 singing the bluegrass standard “I Never Will Marry” pretty convicingly, even though she did marry three times, the third time (to Johnny Cash) for 35 years.

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York Magazine; a longtime contributor to the Washington Monthly; and a former policy adviser to three governors and a U.S. senator from his home state of Georgia.