![]() Smith was then fired following her first performance, later theorizing it was because she was pregnant. She then briefly joined the cast of the Saturday Night Jamboree, a local country music television program. Her professional performance was at the 1962 Washington County Fair. Smith's husband encouraged her singing and she began performing with more frequency. At age 19, she married her first husband, Darren Smith. She also worked as a drugstore clerk, a dental assistant and in a grocery store. Following graduation, she worked as telephone operator in Lowell, Ohio. With only one-tenth of a point behind the valedictorian, Smith graduated from Salem-Liberty High School in 1959 as the class salutatorian. Smith did not perform publicly until high school when a friend invited her to sing Connie Francis's pop hit " My Happiness". While in the hospital recovering, she was given a guitar and learned how to play different chords. She took up the guitar following a lawnmower accident, which nearly cut her leg off. On Saturday nights, the family would tune into the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. ![]() Her stepfather played mandolin, while her brother played fiddle, and her other brother played guitar. Smith was influenced by music in her childhood. The couple later had two more children together, totaling to fifteen children. Smith's stepfather brought eight children to the marriage, while Meador brought five (including Smith). Her mother divorced her biological father when she was a child and re-married to Tom Clark. ![]() "There were some tough times that I went through as a young child," she told an interviewer. Her biological father was an alcoholic and he was abusive to Smith's family. They would later move to Dungannon, Ohio. Her parents were originally from West Virginia, and when Smith was five months old, the family returned there.
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