Tish Cyrus is opening up about the end of her marriage to ex-husband Billy Ray Cyrus. The 56-year-old mother of Grammy-winning artist Miley Cyrus opened up about what finally gave her the strength to end her marriage of 30 years to the “Achy Breaky Heart” singer on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy, revealing that it was the COVID-19 pandemic that finally led to their official split.
During their three decades of marriage, both Tish and Billy Ray filed for divorce on separate occasions before their official divorce, but Tish said it was when Billy Ray left their California home for two years at the start of the pandemic, living instead in Tennessee, that she finally felt like she could leave. “During that period, I took a really good, hard look at life, my life, and like, ‘What was I gonna do?'” she told host Alex Cooper, admitting her marriage “had not been in a good place for a long time.”
“And I think I did stay so long out of fear of being alone. Like I had met him when I was 23, 24,” said Tish, who also shares Brandi, 36, Trace, 34, Braison, 29, and Noah, 23, with Billy Ray. “So being alone, and all of a sudden just having kind of the weight of the world off my shoulders, and I was able to just breathe. And smoke pot and garden, and go skinny dipping in my pool. That’s what I did during COVID. It was hugely transformative.”
In August 2020, as Tish was starting to embrace a new chapter of her life, tragedy struck when her mother died. “I was alone during that time, I had to go through it alone, and I literally can’t believe I did that,” she shared. “It was so crazy, my two biggest fears in life were being alone and my mom passing away. And I had one month of a complete psychological breakdown. It was the worst thing, it was not good. I just kind of pushed the mom thing under the rug, and then the divorce thing came.” She added, “I could not eat, I could not sleep, I could not stop crying. I don’t have my mom, and then I don’t have my husband that has been my husband for 30 years. Like I’m scared.”
Since then, however, Tish has been able to move on and find happiness with Prison Break actor Dominic Purcell. She and Purcell tied the knot in a private ceremony in August 2023, with the “Flowers” artist standing by her side. Even after all the heartache, Tish said she tries not to think too hard about what life would have been like if she had left her marriage earlier. “I really didn’t want Noah to still be young,” she reasoned, “but looking back on it, it would have been much better for her had I left.”