If that’s your criteria, where did Jerry Lee Lewis marry his 13 year old cousin who still believed in Santa Claus?
You're the one who brought up marrying 7 year-olds, not me.
I wasn't in the loop on Jerry Lee's marriage, and I think that's a mite too young, frankly, even in the rural South of 1957. So did the rest of the world, because when the british tabloids broke the story, he went from $10,000 a night concerts to playing bars for $100 a night.
First cousin once removed is a generation down the line from the first cousin. There's a little more genetic room there than mother's sister's daughter, because it would be more like mother's sister's daughter's daughter. If you can follow that. Anyway, Jerry Lee Lewis isn't one I would necessarily hold up as a paragon of marital skill, considering that was only one of seven marriages he went through.
Anyhow, in Her (Myra's) words, later, as an indisputably grown woman, she had this to say:
In my little mind, I couldn’t believe that they could not see that I was a grown woman. I was only 13, but people said I was more mature than Jerry. I was serious-minded, I was like, “We gotta take care of this and do this,” and he was like, “Where’s the piano?” That’s what he is, that’s what he’s about. And I really, truly wasn’t a typical teenager. My generation was taught to hide under our desk when the bomb came, so you always had in the back of your mind that any minute, any day, life could come to an end. What I wanted was a baby in my arms, a home, a husband, a kitchen to cook in, a yard to raise roses. My little brother was born because I begged my parents for a baby at ten years old. They called me his deputy mom; I just took him over. That was what I was like, and Jerry was busy having fun, he was the true entertainer.
]It wasn’t anybody’s business—OK, it was somebody’s business, but it wasn’t everybody’s business. It was my family’s business, it was mine and Jerry’s business. And, OK, if you say to me now, “There’s a 13-year-old girl over here who wants to get married,” I would say “God, please do not do that, little girl. Go to college, get an education, then figure it out.” But it was a different world, things have changed so drastically. Options, mindsets—this world has gone so fast the last fifty years that you can’t keep up with it.
There is a lot more at the link if you are inclined to read her take on the whole thing.:
https://medium.com/cuepoint/ballad-of-the-13-year-old-bride-f909cbe1c6b4The world has indeed changed, but people want to judge yesterday and another place by their fresh minted ruler.
