Wynonna Judd still can’t believe her longtime country music mentor, Dolly Parton, is no longer with Us.
“[I am] still in denial,” Judd, 62, admitted of her dear friend’s death to The Guardian in a profile published Friday, November 6. “It’s the end of an era.”
Us confirmed in August that Parton died at the age of 80 after a brief and private battle with an undisclosed form of cancer.
Judd also revealed that she often referred to Parton as her “aunt.”
“She was always the brightest light in the room,” the country star recalled of the late icon. “She had such a joy about her and it was infectious — being with her was like being at Disney World, she was just so much fun.”
Judd went on to explain her last conversation with Parton before the iconic country music star’s death.
“She showed up for me at my mom’s funeral and memorial and sang a little of ‘I Will Always Love You,’” Wynonna said, referring to her mother Naomi Judd’s 2022 death. “[Dolly] looked into my eyes and told me that she loved me and I told her I loved her, and that was the last time I saw her.”
Wynonna and her mother rose to fame in the 1980s as a country music duo. Naomi died by suicide in April 2022 at the age of 76. (In addition to Wynonna, Naomi is survived by husband Larry Strickland and daughter Ashley Judd.)
“They were forced together,” Strickland, 80, told People in April 2025 of his stepdaughters’ dynamic. “We all had to come together around this trauma, this tragic event. And it, of course, opened our eyes about how short life can be and how fleeting. Realizing that we lost a wife and mother, it forced us to be together, whether we wanted to or not.”
He continued at the time, “It just really drove me closer to them because they’re what’s left of [Naomi]. We were close, I think, always in the early years and later years, but the fact that Naomi’s gone and Wynonna and Ashley are the main part of her that’s left, and it’s what’s still here for me to cling to and have in my life.”
Naomi had died days before The Judds were set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“It was like this final consummation of the love in the relationship that we had transformed,” Ashley, 58, said in her family’s 2025 Lifetime docuseries about Naomi’s legacy, regarding her last moments with her mother. “What an honor, to be born into this human life, to be chosen by her. I got to hold space, I got to bookend. And I’m just so glad I was there.”
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