Dolly Parton has died at age 80, leaving goddaughter Miley Cyrus mourning one of her closest bonds.
Parton, the “Jolene” singer, passed away Tuesday following hospitalization for kidney and autoimmune issues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville just days earlier, according to reports. She was 80. Her death came months after her husband, Carl Dean, died in March 2025.
The country legend became Miley’s godmother in 1992, when Billy Ray Cyrus, now 65, asked her to take on the honor upon his daughter’s birth. “I’ve known her since she was a baby,” Parton said of Miley, now 33, during a 2009 interview with “Good Morning America.” “Her father’s a friend of mine. And when she was born, he said, ‘You just have to be her godmother,’ and I said, ‘I accept.'”
Parton added during that same interview, “We never did do a big ceremony, but I’m so proud of her, love her and she’s just like one of my own.”
The “I Will Always Love You” singer and Billy Ray first met in 1992 when he toured with her following the success of his hit “Achy Breaky Heart.” “We just got to be good friends,” Parton explained on the “Howard Stern Show” in 2024. “He’s a Kentucky boy. I’m from Tennessee.”
Parton further explained that she and Miley, born to Billy Ray and ex-wife Tish Cyrus on Nov. 23, 1992, have “stayed very, very close through the years.”
When asked if her goddaughter sought career advice, Parton told Stern, “Well, she’s asked me a lot of things, and she mostly just runs things by me. And we talk. She’s very successful. Miley is very smart. She’s very intuitive about the business, and I just think Miley is a spectacular human being and an amazing talent.”
During that same 2024 interview, Parton also gushed about collaborating with Miley on her 2023 rock album “Rockstar,” which featured Parton’s cover of Miley’s 2013 track “Wrecking Ball.” “I just felt honored,” she said. “I love that song, and I love Miley, and when I started to choose all these people for my record, or songs that I wanted to do, I thought, ‘I have to have Miley.'”
The duo also worked together on Miley’s 2017 track “Rainbowland,” and Miley made Parton’s hit “Jolene” her own during a 2012 “Backyard Sessions” performance. They shared the stage numerous times over the years, including for a 2010 Hallmark special, a 2016 appearance on “The Voice,” and the 2019 Grammy Awards.
Miley and Parton later appeared in a T-Mobile Super Bowl LVI commercial in 2022, and co-hosted NBC’s 2023 “Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party,” which Parton called the “thrill of [her] life.”
“Even when we were rehearsing, Miley was crying,” Parton shared in a 2023 interview. “The fact that we were singing so well together stirred up our emotions very much. Then we went into ‘I Will Always Love You,’ and she would just have these tears coming down and it was so emotional.”
Parton also made several appearances as “Aunt Dolly” on Miley’s Disney show “Hannah Montana,” which aired from 2006 to 2011. “We just worked so great together … and thanks to her, I had a whole new following of people that were turned on to me,” Parton told Vanity Fair in 2020. “These young, little kids that were her fans, and kids that were fans of just the whole show, and the other little artists on the show, but here I am, Miley’s fairy godmother.”
Earlier this year, Miley honored her Disney character for the show’s 20th anniversary special. While promoting it on “Good Morning America” in March, she revealed how Parton influenced her to create something spectacular. “One of my favorite pieces of advice [Dolly] ever gave me was, ‘Start promoting something before it’s real, because then as people get excited, it’ll be easier to make it happen,'” the “Flowers” songstress explained. “So I just started talking about ‘Hanniversary’ special before one even existed. And then I went to Disney and said, ‘Look how excited everyone is about this, you know, imaginary ‘Hanniversary.””
In 2022, Miley gushed over having the “world’s best godmother” during an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Recalling their coordination, she said, “Every time I coordinate and kind of communicate with Dolly, it’s still through fax … She’s rarely on the phone.”
“She does a fax, and then someone scans the fax, and they put it into a text message, and then that gets sent to me,” Miley explained, before joking about Parton’s other old-fashioned habits. “She made me a demo one time, where she talks about being super high-tech, but it was all through a cassette, which she voice-memoed onto a flip phone, which someone then put on to an iPhone, which then got sent to me.”
Miley emphasized that while Parton had “a phone,” she simply didn’t “use it.”
Miley also recalled performing Parton’s 1997 song “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” on “Saturday Night Live” in 2021. “I got a fax. And she loved it,” she told Meyers. “She loves when I introduce my fans to music in a way that’s still me. Dolly doesn’t want anyone to copy [and] paste … she wants them to infuse themselves into her music, cause that’s what I think has made Dolly so loved.”
The “Party in the U.S.A.” singer also declared at the time that Parton was “the most loved person on the planet,” adding, “She’s left this big mark on the entire world, that all of us are just trying to fill her crystallized shoes, which is never going to happen.”
Parton served as an honorary mother figure, with Miley telling W Magazine in 2024, “Dolly’s been like a mother to me,” She continued, “Actually, I was just reading this fax that she sent me two Mother’s Days ago. Dolly wrote to me to say: ‘How much do I love you? As much as my heart can hold and as far as my arms can reach.'”
“It gets me choked up,” Miley emotionally shared. “I just love her so much. Last Christmas, she gave me a whole mannequin, done in her proportions and wearing her outfit. It’s so major.”
After Parton announced health struggles last September followed by canceled appearances, Miley gave an update in December 2025. “She’s always gonna keep the show going,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “The show must go on. She’s just excited to get back to work.”
While Miley has not publicly addressed Parton’s passing, Billy Ray penned a tribute via Instagram Tuesday. “I have so many moments and memories with Dolly, it’s hard to know where to start,” he wrote. “Like every little boy, I grew up loving Dolly Parton. She was a part of our lives, on our TV’s, right in our living rooms.”
He added, “In 1992, I’ll never forget walking into her dressing room to apologize for all the tabloid stories which claimed I was having an affair with her. In true Dolly fashion, she just looked at me, winked and said, ‘Honey, this trash sells records!'”
Billy Ray also shared how he recently received a “beautiful message” from Parton, saying “she loved [him] with her whole heart.” He concluded, “I will always love her in the same way. With my whole heart … and I always will.”
Parton was still working up until her death, with her last public appearance in June for the Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop ribbon-cutting ceremony, and had announced in July that she was working on the Broadway production “Dolly: A True Original Musical.”