Tish Cyrus didn’t see it coming, but looking back, the end of her 30-year marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus was a long time in the making.
It took a pandemic and some bonding time with her daughter Miley for the 56-year-old to realise that it was time to embrace change.
“I thought I was going to be alone forever,” Tish told People magazine, while opening up about her decision to finally walk away from the country music star after he opted to reside in Tennessee during the COVID lockdown, while she thought it best to be near her youngest daughters, Miley and Noah, in California.
By 2022, she’d officially filed for divorce, following the death of her mother in 2020.
“It was so crazy because, honestly, my two biggest fears in life were always being alone and my mum passing away,” she shared on the Call Her Daddy podcast alongside daughter Brandi. “I was like, ‘I just don’t know if I’ll survive when my mum dies,’” she recalled. “And I had, like, one month of a … complete psychological breakdown. It was the worst thing.”
The mum-of-five said her weight dropped to 58kg. “I could not eat. I could not sleep. I could not stop crying,” she said, explaining that the physical distance between her and Billy Ray during her mother’s passing was the final straw.
“[Our marriage] had not been in a good place for a long time … I get why women are scared to leave, not only bad relationships, [but to] step into new careers and all these things. And I was literally terrified,” she said, adding that after grieving her marriage, it felt like a weight lifted from her shoulders.
She also told People, “I would love to just be this poster child for women our age and just be like, I promise you starting over sometimes is the best thing you can ever do. It’s been great for me.”
Despite having pushed through brief separations in 2010 and 2013, Tish knew that the third time was different.
“I literally just had made that firm decision and was like, ‘I’m moving on with my life.’ And, you know what, girl? It worked out for the best,” she told podcast host Alex Cooper.
Daughters Miley, 31, and Brandi, 36, and son Trace, who turns 35 on February 24, have clearly embraced their mother’s decision. The trio were the only siblings to attend Tish’s 2023 wedding to Australian actor, Dominic Purcell, 53, while Noah, 24, and son Braison, 29, spent the day posting videos and selfies of themselves on a shopping trip instead.
Two months later, their father married Aussie singer Firerose, 34, who the 62-year-old met 12 years earlier on the set of daughter Miley’s TV series Hannah Montana.
At this month’s Grammy Awards, when Miley took home two of the night’s top gongs, it was Tish and Brandi who she had by her side. Miley even paid tribute to the pair onstage, and made a point by clarifying “I don’t think I forgot anyone” in her thank you speech, despite omitting her famous father and other siblings.
And Tish was there to back her daughter up, gushing about the ‘Flowers’ singer on the Grammys red carpet.
“It is so incredible, but as her mum, it’s watching her grow into this woman,” Tish said of her girl, who went through her own divorce from Aussie actor, Liam Hemsworth, in 2020. “It’s so crazy to think she’s only 31 and everything that she’s achieved, but as a person, she’s just the most incredible human being. I’m so proud.”
The pride goes both ways.
“My whole life my mum has been behind the scenes,” Miley said in a 2023 Vogue profile on her mum’s wedding to Purcell. “She was always the one getting me ready for big days, starting with cheerleading competitions, then eventually on sets or backstage before a performance. She has never stopped celebrating me and has been so supportive of my decisions. I feel honored to be that person for her, now that I’m older.”
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