Denver hit No. 1 with song inspired by wife from Minnesota

Today's Morning Edition music is from 40 years ago this week when "Annie's Song" by John Denver was No. 1 on the pop charts.

Denver said he wrote the love song in ten minutes on a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado.

It was inspired by his first wife Annie Martell Denver, a native of St. Peter, Minnesota.

The couple lived in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina for two years in the early 1970s before purchasing a home in Aspen. They divorced in 1982. John Denver died in 1997 when the plane he was piloting crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

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