Country music icon Dolly Parton died at the age of 80-years-old, days after she had announced that she was dealing with health issues and stated that she “still” had many things she wanted to “achieve.”
In a video posted on Parton’s X account, Bryan Seaver, Parton’s nephew, announced that his aunt had passed away. Seaver expressed that while sadness “lies with us” it is not with Parton. Seaver added that “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus.”
“Hey everyone, my name is Bryan Seaver, son of Cassie Parton, and I am representing the Parton and Owens family today, announcing the passing of my aunt Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean,” Seaver said in the video. “Sister, sis, Aunt Granny to one generation, and Gigi to the next.”
“This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality,” Seavers continued. “As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father Larry held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment, but haven’t truly felt it until now. It is an honor, an honor that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness. But, sadness lies with us, not with Dolly.”
Seaver’s announcement comes after Parton told People on August 21, that she was “dealing with some health issues” that she hadn’t paid attention to when she was “watching over” her husband Carl, who passed away in 2025.
“As I’ve shared in video messages throughout the past year, I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl,” Parton told the outlet. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to manage something like this.”
Known for her curvy physique, massive blonde wigs and skin-tight outfits that served her self-deprecating wit, she was among the most beloved personalities in music and beyond — the rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.
She wrote hundreds of songs, including classics like “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You,” that totaled more than 100 million worldwide sales and more than 1 billion online streams. Parton, who plucked bejeweled banjos, guitar and dulcimers with her long fingernails during performances, was a generous philanthropist and successful businesswoman whose projects included a theme park in the Smoky Mountain foothills near her birthplace.
Her career was forever influenced by her upbringing as one of 12 children born into what she called a “dirt poor” Tennessee family. She started her education nonprofit, Imagination Library, to send free books to children in Tennessee because her father, who quit school to work on the farm, struggled to learn to read.
Parton’s first musical performances were in church, where her grandfather was a preacher. By age 10, she was learning guitar and singing on local television shows. At 13, she appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, where Johnny Cash introduced her as “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.”
With a suitcase of songs, she followed her uncle, Bill Owens, also a songwriter, to Nashville after graduating high school in 1964. Fred Foster, who produced Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and more, saw her potential and got her songs cut by other artists, as well as recording and releasing Parton singing her own material. By the mid-1970s, Parton was a Nashville queen.
Parton’s legend will live on long after she’s gone. Fans, for now, can look forward to a stage musical about Parton to open in New York City in December.
“The rhinestones were never the whole story,” a post on Parton’s X feed said last month, accounting the event, which will feature songs like “9 to 5,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” and “Coat of Many Colors.”
Last March, Parton’s husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, died. Dean was 82-years-old.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that in honor of country music star Dolly Parton, who died at 80-years-0ld, he was ordering that the American flag be lowered for one week.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.