Billy Ray Cyrus turned 65 on Tuesday, sharing a celebratory Instagram reel filled with birthday tributes from family and fellow artists, a post that landed just an hour after news broke of the death of his longtime friend, Dolly Parton.
The reel compiled birthday messages from Cyrus’s children Noah, Miley and Braison, girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley, Old Town Road collaborator Lil Nas X, Garth Brooks, Diplo, Shania Twain, Gretchen Wilson and Kathy Mattea.
Many fans in the comments wished Cyrus a happy birthday, though the timing prompted some emotional reactions given the same-day news of Parton’s passing, with one commenter writing, “Guys it’s my birthday too and lowkey im crying cause [expletive] dolly out here dead, and I’m crying cause why dolly bro why.”
Parton, widely known as the Queen of Country, died at age 80.
Her nephew, Bryan Seaver, announced her death in a video posted to her official Instagram on Tuesday, August 25, a task he said she had specifically asked him to carry out years in advance.
He emphasized that the grief surrounding her passing belongs to those left behind, not to Parton herself, now that she has been reunited with her husband, Carl Dean, who died in March of last year.
In what turned out to be her final interview, published by PEOPLE on August 21, Parton acknowledged that she had let her own health slide while caring for Dean in his final months.
“I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl.”
Cyrus and Parton share a friendship that stretches back more than three decades, rooted in more than just the music industry.
The two toured together in 1992 after Cyrus’s breakout hit Achy Breaky Heart, and research has traced the pair as distant relatives, seventh cousins once removed, connected through a shared ancestor named John Brickey.
Their bond deepened that same year when Cyrus and his then-partner welcomed daughter Miley and asked Parton to serve as her honourary godmother, a relationship that later carried over into fiction: Parton appeared as “Aunt Dolly” on Miley’s Disney Channel series Hannah Montana.
Musically, the two collaborated multiple times over the years, including Cyrus’s appearance in Parton’s 1993 Romeo music video and their 2020 duet, Christmas Where We Are, from her album A Holly Dolly Christmas.
