“I Know You’re Married” — in full, “I Know You’re Married (But I Love You Still)” — is a country heartbreak song written by Mack Magaha and Don Reno. Magaha was the fiddler in Reno’s band, and Don Reno, Red Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups first recorded the song in 1957.
The lyric works a frankly forbidden theme: a singer in love with a woman already married to someone else, unable to let the feeling go. That bittersweet, slightly scandalous angle — sympathy for a love that can never be acted on — gave the song an emotional pull beyond the usual bluegrass lament.
The song crossed over from bluegrass into mainstream country, recorded most prominently as a duet by Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, and cut by other country artists as well. It has remained a standard in both worlds, a durable example of the close kinship between bluegrass and honky-tonk songwriting.
