This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

For nearly 50 years, Josephine Earp was married to the most famous lawman of the Old West.

Wyatt Earp. Here to tell her story is Anne Kirchner, author of Lady at the O.K. Corral,

the true story of Josephine Marcus Earp. Let's take a listen.

In the 1950s, Wyatt Earp was everywhere on television. Every single American network

had a Wyatt Earp or Tombstone-themed show on. Whiteiter, Batmasterson, Gunsmoke.

And so when we were watching television and watching White Earp,

we certainly never thought about White Earp having a Jewish wife.

And we thought we knew something about the gunfight.

What we didn't know was that there was this gutsy, busty, broad

who had a lover on both sides of the gunfight at the OK

corral. And we thought we knew something about Wyatt Earp himself. He was the one with the white

hat, right? But what we didn't know was that the Wyatt Earp that we knew was in large part a story

of Josephine Earp's making.

She had the extraordinary sense of celebrity that in some ways shaped the legend of Wyatt Earp

into what she would call a nice clean story.

So let me take you back to Josephine's beginnings.

And in later life, Josephine would always say that she was the daughter of a wealthy German merchant.

Not true.

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