Miley Cyrus posted a full statement remembering Dolly Parton on Wednesday, a day after the country singer died at 80 in Nashville. Cyrus had been Parton’s goddaughter, and to a generation of Disney Channel viewers the two were Miley Stewart and Aunt Dolly.
What Cyrus Wrote
“The feeling of losing my Aunt Dolly is beyond what feels right to share. Our most sacred moments were private and they’ll stay there behind the stage, beneath the glamour & between our hearts.
What I KNOW is Dolly would want me to feel it, write a song about it, and then continue on and be strong. I have an angel by my side. I always have. One of our last conversations was about music and metamorphosis. 🦋
I will always love her and want to make her proud. My heart breaks for the world, her family and friends who will miss her deeply. We’re in this loss together and we will see her in all of the most beautiful things.”
Miley Cyrus
Parton’s family confirmed her death Tuesday, August 25. Her team said she had faced a brief battle with cancer.
Aunt Dolly On Hannah Montana
Parton appeared three times on Hannah Montana as Aunt Dolly, Miley Stewart’s godmother, a character with no blood tie to the Stewarts but a long friendship with the family. She turned up in seasons one, two and four. The show mirrored their real relationship.
The character debuted in the season one episode “Good Golly, Miss Dolly,” which premiered September 29, 2006. Robby Ray summons Aunt Dolly to Malibu because Miley’s crush on Jake Ryan is wrecking her focus, and Aunt Dolly accidentally tapes Miley confessing those feelings, sending Miley and Lilly scrambling to recover the tape before Jake sees it. Parton played her in rhinestones and towering hair, dispensing advice as folksy one liners.
She returned in the season two episode “I Will Always Loathe You,” a title that turns on her own 1973 song and sets her against Vicki Lawrence’s Mamaw Ruthie, Miley’s grandmother and Robby Ray’s mother, in a feud the show traces back to a fight over Elvis. She closed out the run in season four’s “Kiss It All Goodbye” in 2010. Aunt Dolly also had a husband, Uncle Pete, who never appeared on camera.
Cyrus told Variety in a March 2026 cover interview that the Parton episodes were her favorites of the series. Parton said in a 2020 Vanity Fair interview that Cyrus pushed for the casting herself and that the show handed her a whole new following of young children. On her own site, Parton said small kids would spot her in the street and call out to her as Aunt Dolly.
A Godmother Before The Wig
Parton became Cyrus’s godmother through Billy Ray Cyrus, who toured with her after his 1992 hit “Achy Breaky Heart” and asked her to be his daughter’s godmother. Miley was born later that year. The two kept performing together long after the series ended, on The Voice, at the 2019 Grammy Awards, on NBC’s New Year’s Eve special in December 2022, and on a 2023 duet version of Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.”
Cyrus also credits Parton with the existence of the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special, which streamed on Disney+ and Hulu on March 24, 2026, twenty years to the day after the series premiered on Disney Channel. Parton’s advice was to promote something before it exists so that nobody can turn it down, and Cyrus applied it here, teasing the anniversary special before one existed.
Cyrus was named a Disney Legend in 2024, the youngest person to receive the honor. Read our full look at Parton’s four decades of Disney work.
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