Miley Cyrus has not yet publicly addressed the death of her godmother, Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday at 80.
Billy Ray Cyrus, 65, broke the silence for the family Tuesday with a lengthy Instagram tribute to the country legend, who had been hospitalized days earlier at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville for what outlets reported as kidney and autoimmune issues. Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, had died in March 2025. The “Achy Breaky Heart” singer had asked Parton to become Miley’s godmother in 1992, the year his daughter was born.
“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 in 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 two Tennessee-area natives — Parton from the state itself, Billy Ray from Kentucky — had met that same 1992 year when he toured with her following his breakthrough hit.
The bond deepened across decades. Parton told Howard Stern in 2024 that she and Miley “stayed very, very close through the years,” and described their dynamic as one where the younger star “mostly just runs things by me,” She continued, “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.”
Their professional collaborations stacked up. The duo recorded “Rainbowland” for Miley’s 2017 “Younger Now” album. Parton covered Miley’s 2013 smash “Wrecking Ball” for her own 2023 rock album “Rockstar,” telling Stern, “I just felt honored. 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.'”
Onstage, they performed “Jolene” together for a 2010 Hallmark special, again on “The Voice” in 2016, and at the 2019 Grammy Awards. They co-hosted NBC’s 2023 “Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party,” which Parton called the “thrill of [her] life.” During a 2023 interview, Parton recalled how emotional the rehearsals grew: “Even when we were rehearsing, Miley was crying. 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 appeared as “Aunt Dolly” on Miley’s Disney series “Hannah Montana” from 2006 to 2011. Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2020, she said, “We just worked so great together … and thanks to her, I had a whole new following of people that were turned on to me. 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 revealed on “Good Morning America” that Parton had pushed her to promote a “Hanniversary” special before it officially existed. “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,'” she explained in March. “So I just started talking about ‘Hanniversary’ special before one even existed.”
On “Late Night with Seth Meyers” in 2022, Miley detailed their comically old-school communication style. “Every time I coordinate and kind of communicate with Dolly, it’s still through fax … She’s rarely on the phone,” She continued, “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.” She also described a demo Parton made via “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 to Meyers that Parton “had a phone” but simply didn’t “use it.” She also recalled receiving faxed praise after 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,” Miley said. “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.”
In that same interview, Miley declared Parton “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.”
The maternal dimension ran deep. Miley told W Magazine in 2024, “Dolly’s been like a mother to me,” She shared that she had been reading “this fax that she sent me two Mother’s Days ago,” in which Parton wrote: “How much do I love you? As much as my heart can hold and as far as my arms can reach,” Miley added, “It gets me choked up. 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.”
In December 2025, Miley gave an update on Parton’s health to “Entertainment Tonight” after the legend’s canceled appearances, saying, “She’s always gonna keep the show going. The show must go on. She’s just excited to get back to work.” Parton’s last public appearance came in June for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop. In July, she announced work on the Broadway production “Dolly: A True Original Musical.”
In the viral moment that defined their public bond, Billy Ray’s Instagram tribute Tuesday revealed a final private exchange. He wrote that he had recently received a “beautiful message” from Parton, saying how “she loved [him] with her whole heart,” He added, “I will always love her in the same way. With my whole heart … and I always will.” He also recalled their first meeting in 1992, when he entered her dressing room “to apologize for all the tabloid stories which claimed I was having an affair with her,” and she responded by looking at him, winking, and saying, “Honey, this trash sells records!”
Parton was still working on the Broadway musical at the time of her death.