Daddy-daughter day at the Kentucky Derby! Anna Nicole Smith‘s daughter Dannielynn Birkhead made her annual appearance at the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, May 2, with dad Larry Birkhead, looking every bit the little lady in a pastel pink Monsoon dress and matching headband.
Now 8 years old, Dannielynn carried a sequined purse and showed off sweet pink sandals as she posed for photos with her dad, 42, also wearing pastel pink. This year marked the pair’s fifth appearance at Churchill Downs in their Louisville hometown. See more photos from their day!
As is customary at the Derby, the father-daughter duo’s outfits were high priority. “It took me two months to get my daughter’s outfit together – shopping, and mixing and matching,” Birkhead told the Courier-Journal at the Derby‘s Barnstable Brown Gala, the night before their red carpet appearance.
Dannielynn, who followed in her mom’s footsteps to model for GUESS Kids in 2012, wasn’t shy about sharing her thoughts on dad’s look. After all, she couldn’t be embarrassed by him in front of the cameras. “She had my outfit ready — she said, ‘Dad, you have to wear this outfit,’ then she said ‘It doesn’t look right, you’ll embarrass me, so wear this [instead],'” Birkhead said.
Birkhead has raised his daughter on his own in the eight years since Smith’s 2007 death at age 39 from a drug overdose. The single dad takes pride in giving his little girl a low-key life away from the spotlight. “I just got offered to do a father-daughter movie, but we don’t know,” he told Us Weekly at Saturday’s Derby. “We try to be conservative and let her be a kid — she’s in Girl Scouts right now.”
