Rosanne Cash's 5 Children: All About Her Son and Daughters

Rosanne Cash is the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash and a four-time Grammy winner, but her biggest role is that of mom to her five children: Hannah, Caitlin, Chelsea, Carrie and Jakob.

“I would not be who I am without them,” she said in a 2010 interview with writer A.M. Homes. “Becoming a mother changed me fundamentally.”

In 1979, Rosanne married her first husband, musician Rodney Crowell, becoming a stepmother to his daughter Hannah. Prior to their divorce in 1992, Rosanne and Rodney welcomed three daughters together: Caitlin, Chelsea and Carrie.

Around the time of their split, Rosanne moved from Nashville to New York with her daughters. Although she described that period as pivotal for her as an artist, as a mother she said it was a struggle.

“I don’t think I was a great parent during that time. I have regrets about my distractions and being consumed with my own upheaval,” Rosanne shared during a December 2023 interview on the Basic Folk podcast. “My saving grace is that I couldn’t have loved them more. And that I tried hard.”

The singer-songwriter married her second husband, producer John Leventhal, in 1995. Four years later, the pair welcomed a child together, son Jakob.

Here’s everything to know about Rosanne Cash’s five children: Hannah, Caitlin, Chelsea, Carrie and Jakob.

Hannah Crowell, 48

Rosanne became a mother for the first time after marrying Rodney Crowell in 1979. At the time, he had a 3-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and Rosanne took on the role of raising her.

Hannah was born on May 6, 1976, to Rodney and his first wife, Martha Dant Watts. Despite the fact that Rosanne and Rodney divorced when Hannah was a teenager, the singer has always considered Hannah her child and the two have maintained a relationship.

In May 2020, Hannah shared a sweet Instagram post for Rosanne. “Happy Mother’s Day to my mom. She is beyond generous, my style icon and has always modeled how imperative hard work is to one’s soul,” she wrote alongside a vintage photo of the singer. “She is ... the person I will forever turn to when my own children have me questioning my ability to press on in this wild world of mothering.”

However, things were not always so favorable between them. In her 2010 memoir, Composed, Rosanne admitted that she and Hannah had a “fraught” relationship at times. “I had taken on the job of mothering her at the age of twenty-two, long before I outgrew a need for mothering myself,” she wrote. “I was unprepared and unequipped.”

Still, she praised Hannah for her ability to love and accept her. “She was patient, and long-suffering with my inelegance and sometimes petty attitudes as a stepmother," Rosanne wrote. "Hannah has turned out to be a wondrous and humbling gift in my life.”

Hannah is now a mom herself. She has two daughters, Adeline and Iris, and is also a stepmom to daughter Hailey, who she refers to as her "bonus kid." She lives in Nashville where she works as an interior designer.

According to her website, Hannah is the creative director of her own firm, the Hannah Crowell Design Studio, which has expanded to include landscaping and art curation.

Caitlin Rivers Crowell, 45

Rosanne and Rodney welcomed their first child together, daughter Caitlin Rivers, on Jan. 24, 1980.

According to her memoir, Rosanne chose the middle name Rivers for her firstborn daughter in honor of her paternal grandmother, Carrie Cloveree, whose maiden name was Rivers.

Growing up, Caitlin was something of a daredevil. In her book, Rosanne described her as a bit rebellious and reckless, writing, “For many years [she] led an untamed kind of life.” After graduating from high school in New York, Caitlin moved to Los Angeles where she started working in the music industry doing independent public relations and licensing.

There, she continued to march to the beat of her own drum. “I worried about her a lot—she seemed to always live on the edge, taking many physical and emotional risks,” Rosanne wrote. “She surfed and got heavily tattooed and seemed to relish finding the extremes in everything.”

In 2009, Caitlin married Sam Esty Rayner, a photographer who also happens to be the nephew of Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths.

“With marriage Caitlin has become a fuller, yet more grounded version of who she has always been—a tattooed surfer who is rambunctious and unpredictable, but one who has big, expansive experiences and doesn’t play by anyone else’s rulebook,” Rosanne wrote.

Chelsea Jane Crowell, 43

Rosanne and Rodney welcomed daughter Chelsea Jane on Jan. 25, 1982.

She was born in Nashville and moved to New York following her parents’ divorce. There, she developed a love of horseback riding and spent one year of high school at a boarding school in Maryland for the sport. Chelsea eventually graduated from the Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York.

Given her lineage, it’s no surprise that Chelsea has gone into the creative arts. After high school, she attended Memphis College of Art and studied photography and visual arts, but her true love was music and writing.

In 2009, she released her self-titled debut album, followed by her second album, Crystal City, in 2011. She has also joined her mother onstage multiple times.

“As much as my dad’s legacy is something I cherish, it’s a burden with a lot of moving parts,” Rosanne told The New York Times in 2014. “[Chelsea] goes through the same thing I did, only double.”

For Chelsea, though, it’s a burden she’s willing to carry. “It’s definitely not something that’s there all the time, but you find your areas and make peace with it,” she said in a 2013 interview with the San Diego Troubadour. “Once I had my own records, I began to feel a little bit more confident, to feel a little less pressure. It’s a paying-your-dues type of thing.”

Music isn’t the only thing Rosanne has in common with her middle daughter, either. In her memoir, Rosanne described just how similar they are. “Chelsea has an independence of spirit that I recognize from my own life and my own impulses, but she has taken it a generational step further,” she wrote. “I look up to Chelsea. She seems to have easily synthesized creative ideals that I spent my life struggling to even articulate.”

Like her mom, Chelsea is also a gifted writer. She is a contributing journalist for publications such as The Tennessee Lookout and Rolling Stone.

Chelsea married her husband, musician Terry Kane, in July 2015. Rosanne shared the happy news with an Instagram post, writing, “@chelseajaneonly marries @terryjkane and the entire universe gets a little larger with love,” alongside a photo of their nuptials.

In August 2022, Chelsea and Terry welcomed a baby girl, daughter Evie Crowell Cash Kane. Two weeks later, Rosanne announced the arrival of her granddaughter on Instagram. “I’m in love. A million times over,” she wrote alongside a photo of the newborn.

Carrie Kathleen Crowell, 36

Rosanne and Rodney’s youngest child, daughter Carrie Kathleen, was born in 1988. She was named in honor of Rosanne’s paternal grandmother, Carrie Cloveree, and her sister, Kathy Cash.

“She was a precious and welcome tonic in our lives at that moment,” Rosanne wrote in her memoir about her youngest daughter. Eighteen months after Carrie’s birth, the singer and Rodney split. Their divorce was finalized in 1992.

“It seemed that she came into the family to bind us in love, steel us against loss, and connect all the disparate personalities, come what may,” Rosanne wrote.

In her memoir, Rosanne described her older daughters, Caitlin and Chelsea, as being similar to her in that all three of them remained uninterested in what she called “classically feminine” activities. Hannah and Carrie, however, are described as “domestic goddesses” in contrast.

“She’s really inherited a lot of my mother’s characteristics and passion, so I see my mom every day in this kid,” Rosanne told NPR in 2010 of her youngest daughter.

Like her mom and older sister, Carrie is also highly creative. She is a musician herself and previously hosted an online cooking show. She also opened Crowell Floral, a Nashville-based floral design company, in 2016.

On May 31, 2014, Carrie married record producer and guitarist Dan Knobler. For the wedding, Dan surprised her with an original composition for the bridal processional while her father, Rodney, wrote a song for the couple and performed it during the ceremony.

“It was totally sweet and wonderful,” Carrie told The New York Times in July 2014 about the gifted tunes. “I come from a family where music is important. It felt like a natural, beautiful thing.”

Carrie and Dan welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Willoughby Crowell-Knobler, in June 2018. Their family grew again in November 2020 when they welcomed a baby girl, Olive Vivian Crowell-Knobler.

Jakob William Leventhal, 25

Rosanne and her husband John welcomed her only son, Jakob “Jake” William, on Jan. 22, 1999.

“I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about parenting after twenty-plus years of motherhood, but what I knew about was mothering girls,” Rosanne wrote in Composed. “I had never believed that raising boys could be that different, but I soon discovered how wrong I was.”

Jake was born and raised in New York. After high school, he attended The University of Chicago and graduated in 2021 with a degree in philosophy. Rosanne celebrated the milestone on Instagram with a photo of her and John with their son in his cap and gown. “Congratulations Jake!! We are so, so proud of you,” she wrote in the caption.

Jake has gone on to carve out his own career as a musician. Like his mom, he was aware of what his famous lineage could mean in terms of expectations.

Speaking to Chicago Maroon in 2018 about coming from a family of singer-songwriters, he explained that it wasn’t something he saw as beneficial at first.

“At the end of the day, it is important to me that whatever success I get from music has nothing to do with my parents, and is entirely my own version,” he said. “If I make a song and record it and release it and nobody likes it, that’s fine. I just don’t want anything to come from someone else’s success.”

In 2018, Jake released his debut album, Oh, So Bittersweet! and he released an EP, Greenwich Village Ghosts, two years later.