Tish Cyrus reflecting on her shocking divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus and how it led to a new love.
“I didn’t ever really think I would get a divorce. That was not in the cards at all for me,” Tish, 58, said on the Thursday, May 7, episode of Chelsea Handler’s “Dear Chelsea” podcast. “I was devastated. I’d been married for so long … I didn’t know anything different.”
Tish filed for divorce from Billy Ray, 64, in 2022, ending their 28-year marriage. (The former couple share kids Brandi, 38, Trace, 37, Miley, 33, Braison, 31, and Noah, 26.)
She recalled being in “shock mode” following her split, hinting that she was blindsided by the entire situation.
“I don’t know where I was at,” Tish admitted. “Honestly, I was stoned.”
During a separate podcast appearance in January, Tish revealed that she was “self-medicating” with weed following the 2020 death of her mother, which led into her divorce.
Tish recalled on Thursday’s episode that a friend suggested she try and move on from all the pain by dating her “dream guy,” which happened to be now-husband Dominic Purcell. Tish and Purcell, 56, wed in August 2023.
Tish’s divorce from Billy Ray came up a second time on the podcast as she and Handler were offering advice to one listener who was hoping to move on romantically from her ex-husband.
“For me, it was really having to really make my brain focus on how things had gotten, how things were, instead of how they should be or could be,” Tish explained. “I don’t know how you take the emotion out of it, or how you change how you feel. I think you can look at things in that way of, like, how it could have been. … The fantasy when, what is your reality? That was the hardest part for me.”
Handler praised Tish as the perfect example of someone who has a “second chapter that she didn’t want or expect or was planning for” following a divorce.
Tish noted that falling in love again “undoes” a lot of the lingering feelings that this listener might be having.
“It’s so hard to believe when you’re in it that things can get better, that there is someone else for you out there,” Tish continued. “I think when you, kind of, get grounded in reality of what it is when you actually can move forward and bring great things into your life.”
