Tish Cyrus stayed with Billy Ray Cyrus ‘out of fear’: I had a ‘psychological breakdown’
Tish Cyrus, mother to Grammy Award-winner Miley Cyrus, revealed why she stayed with country singer Billy Ray Cyrus before ending their marriage in 2020.
“During that period, I took a really good, hard look at life, my life, and like, ‘What was I gonna do,'” Cyrus, 56, told “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper during an appearance Tuesday on the podcast.
“Because it 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.”
According to the film producer, it was actually COVID-19 that helped her gain the strength to leave her country singer husband as she was living alone in their California home while the singer was in Tennessee during the first few years of the pandemic.
“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,” said Cyrus. “And smoke pot and garden, and go skinny dipping in my pool. That’s what I did during COVID. It was hugely transformative.”
Cyrus was thrown into fresh turmoil when she received news that her mother had died in August 2020.
“I was alone during that time, I had to go through it alone, and I literally can’t believe I did that,” wailed Cyrus. “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.”
The mother of two revealed that “it was the worst thing, it was not good” adding that she “kind of pushed the mom thing under the rug, and then the divorce thing came.”
“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,” she commented.
Cyrus, who married “Prison Break” star Dominic Purcell in 2023, recalled begging celebrity psychiatrist Daniel Amen to “please put me in a mental hospital,” to which he responded, “‘I do not think that’s the best thing for either of us.’”
This is not the first time that Cyrus and the “Achy Breaky Heart” singer, who officially filed for divorce in April 2022, had attempted to separate.
The former couple, who married in 1993, separated twice in 2010 and 2013, but it just recently stuck.
According to Cyrus, she “never wanted to get a divorce,” but found that once she stopped sacrificing her needs to serve her husband, the marriage “fell apart.”
The “She’s Not Cryin’ Anymore” crooner quickly moved on from his ex-wife with fellow musician Johanna “Firerose” Hodges, whom he married in October 2023.
