Hollywood loves a good romance. They especially love the one where a lawman and a beautiful actress lock eyes across a dusty street in Tombstone, Arizona, and live happily ever after. But if you actually dig into the records of Wyatt and Josephine Earp, the truth is way more messy.
And honestly? It’s a lot more interesting than the movies.
Most of us know the basic legend. Wyatt Earp, the steely-eyed hero of the O.K. Corral, and Josephine "Sadie" Marcus, his devoted wife who stood by him for nearly 50 years. They’re buried together in a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. It looks like a perfect, clean-cut American saga.
But look closer. There are no marriage certificates. There’s a "second wife" who was conveniently erased from the history books. There’s a sheriff who felt betrayed, a gambling habit that drained fortunes, and a decades-long campaign by Josephine herself to rewrite history.
Basically, Josephine was the original PR manager. She spent her final years making sure we only saw the "saintly" version of Wyatt.
The Tombstone Love Triangle Nobody Talks About
When Josephine Marcus arrived in Tombstone around 1880, she wasn't looking for Wyatt. She was actually the common-law wife of Johnny Behan. If that name sounds familiar, it should. Behan was the Cochise County Sheriff and Wyatt’s biggest political rival.
Talk about awkward.
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People like to debate whether Wyatt and Josephine had a secret affair while she was still living with Behan. While we don't have a "gotcha" diary entry, the circumstantial evidence is pretty loud. Behan and Wyatt hated each other's guts, and it wasn't just about taxes or stagecoach robberies. It was personal.
Wait, it gets messier.
While Wyatt was supposedly falling for Josephine, he wasn't exactly a bachelor. He was living with a woman named Mattie Blaylock. She was his common-law wife, a former prostitute who suffered from severe headaches and an addiction to laudanum.
When Wyatt fled Tombstone after the "Vendetta Ride" in 1882, he didn't take Mattie. He sent her to his parents' place and then... just never came back for her. He met up with Josephine in San Francisco instead. Poor Mattie eventually ended up back in prostitution and took her own life a few years later.
Josephine spent the rest of her life making sure Mattie’s name never appeared in a single biography. She wanted to be the only Mrs. Earp.
Did They Actually Ever Get Married?
Short answer: Probably not.
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Josephine claimed they were married by a captain on a yacht off the coast of California in 1892. It sounds romantic. The problem? No record of it exists. In a time when records were surprisingly decent, that’s a red flag.
In reality, they were "common-law." In the late 1800s, if you called yourself "Mr. and Mrs." long enough, people just rolled with it. By 1882, she was calling herself Josephine Earp, and that was that.
Chasing Gold from Idaho to Alaska
After the dust settled in Arizona, Wyatt and Josephine Earp didn't just retire to a quiet life. They were boomtown chasers. They were essentially professional gamblers and entrepreneurs who followed the scent of money wherever it went.
- San Diego: Wyatt ran gambling dens and refereed boxing matches.
- Nome, Alaska: During the Gold Rush, they opened the "Dexter Saloon." It was a massive success. They reportedly made around $80,000 in one season—which is over $2.5 million in today’s money.
- The Mojave Desert: They spent their later years working mining claims in a tiny town called Vidal.
They made a lot of money. They also lost a lot of money. Josephine had a serious gambling habit of her own, specifically on horse racing. It’s one of the few things Wyatt supposedly got annoyed with her about.
The Great Myth-Making Machine
If you’ve read the book I Married Wyatt Earp, you’ve been tricked. Sorta.
For decades, this "memoir" was considered the gold standard for Earp history. It was published in 1976 and supposedly based on Josephine's own writings. But in the late 90s, historians realized the editor, Glenn Boyer, had "embellished" a huge chunk of it.
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Actually, "embellished" is a nice way of saying he made stuff up.
Josephine herself was a nightmare for biographers. When Stuart Lake was writing the famous Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal in the late 1920s, she constantly harassed him. She threatened lawsuits. She demanded he leave out the gambling. She demanded he leave out the drinking. She definitely demanded he leave out Johnny Behan.
She wanted Wyatt to be a hero of biblical proportions. She was so successful that for 50 years, the public didn't even know he’d had a wife before her.
Why the Legend Still Matters
The reason we're still talking about Wyatt and Josephine Earp in 2026 isn't because they were perfect. It’s because they were survivors. They lived through one of the most violent eras of American history and managed to stick together for 47 years.
Was it a "good" marriage? Depends on who you ask. Relatives said Wyatt spoiled her "hand and foot." Others said she was high-strung and paranoid. But they stayed.
If you're looking to dive deeper into the real story, don't just watch Tombstone (even though Kurt Russell is great). Look into the work of researchers like Casey Tefertiller or Ann Kirschner. They’ve done the heavy lifting of separating Josephine’s PR spin from the actual court records and census data.
To get a true sense of their life, you can actually visit the site of their desert cottage in Vidal, California, or see their shared headstone at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park. Just remember when you look at that grave: the woman buried there worked harder than anyone to make sure you only knew the legend, not the man.
To truly understand this era, look for primary sources like the Tombstone Epitaph archives or the research papers of the Arizona Historical Society. Comparing the sanitized "official" memoirs with 1880s court testimonies is the best way to see how history is actually manufactured.