The Tale of A Golden Ring
Written by Songwriters Rafe Vanhoy and Bobby Braddock, “Golden Ring” was a song about a golden wedding ring which witnessed a couple’s love, marriage, and divorce before it ended up back at the pawnshop where it originally belonged.
Braddock was inspired by a drama about the life of a handgun and its various owners – from a hunter, police officer, criminal, and a father of a two-year-old child – owning the gun at one point, and there were consequences played out in each segment. Braddock applied the idea to this song.
“Golden Ring” tells the tale of a young couple from Chicago who is very much in love. The two went to a pawnshop to shop for a wedding ring and married in a small chapel later that afternoon. However, in the song’s third verse, the couple has been fighting, and the marriage was clearly in trouble. Shortly afterward, the woman told her husband that she no longer loved him, threw the ring down, and left. The ring, once again in a pawn shop by itself, waiting for its next owners.
“Golden ring with one tiny little stone. Cast aside like the love that’s dead and gone. By itself, it’s just a cold metallic thing. Only love can make a golden wedding ring,” the song goes.