Key Takeaways:
- Miley Cyrus and her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, famously shared the screen as a fictional father-daughter duo on the TV show Hannah Montana.
- Off camera, their relationship struggled, setting the stage for a years-long estrangement in the wake of Billy Ray’s divorce from Miley’s mom in 2022.
- Miley wrote the new song “Secrets” for Billy Ray, and the two have now mended their rift.
Pop star and actor Miley Cyrus was seemingly destined to become a performer like her father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, from the moment Hannah Montana first aired in 2006. So, it was only fitting that she launched to fame while the musically talented father-daughter duo starred together on the hit Disney Channel show.
Viewers loved Hannah Montana, which set a network ratings record for its 2011 finale. But behind the scenes, Billy Ray and Miley had begun navigating ups and downs in their real-life father-daughter relationship. The tension culminated in a years-long public estrangement following the divorce of Miley’s parents in 2022.
But earlier this year, Billy Ray and Miley’s discord came to an end. Here’s what you need to know about their rift, how they resolved their issues, and the song Miley wrote that helped them reunite.
Trouble began while Hannah Montana was still filming
Just as Billy Ray Cyrus was breaking onto the country music scene, the “Achy Breaky Heart” singer was also starting a new chapter as a father. He and Tish Finley (later Tish Cyrus) welcomed their daughter Miley into the world in November 1992. The couple wed the following December, after which Billy Ray adopted Tish’s two older children from her previous marriage. They went on to have another son and daughter together, as well.
Meanwhile, Billy Ray had added acting to his resume. As his starring role on the medical TV show Doc was winding down, the opportunity for another part opened up. Miley, at age 12, had been cast in the lead role of Miley Stewart on the upcoming series Hannah Montana, and Disney was looking for someone to play her father, Robby Ray Stewart. The network asked Billy Ray to audition. When offered the part, he was apprehensive.
“The last thing I would want to do is screw up Miley’s show,” Billy Ray told The New York Times. He ultimately accepted, and the father and daughter began to find their footing as castmates in addition to family members. It wasn’t always easy.
During a February 2011 interview with GQ, Billy Ray revealed Hannah Montana began to tear his family—and his relationship with Miley—apart two seasons into the TV show’s four season run.
“The business was driving a wedge between us,” he said. “How many interviews did I give and say, ‘You know what’s important between me and Miley is I try to be a friend to my kids’? I said it a lot. And sometimes I would even read other parents might say, ‘You don’t need to be a friend, you need to be a parent.’ Well, I’m the first guy to say to them right now: You were right.”
Between 2008 and 2010, Miley was embroiled in a handful of scandals that ran counter to the squeaky clean image Disney often demands of its child stars. That included posing semi-nude for the cover of Vanity Fair when she was 15 and dancing on a pole during a performance of her hit song “Party in the USA” at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. The following year, a video showed the teen drinking a beer in Spain, and photos captured her smoking salvia, a legal drug, from a bong.
“I should have been a better parent. I should have said, ‘Enough is enough—it’s getting dangerous and somebody’s going to get hurt,’” Billy Ray told GQ. “I should have, but I didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t know the ball was out of bounds until it was way up in the stands somewhere.”
By the time Season 4 of Hannah Montana began production in January 2010, things had hit a low point. “I was going to work every single day knowing that my family had fallen apart, but yet I had to sit in front of that camera,” Billy Ray said. “I look back and I go, ‘How did I ever make it through that?’ I must be a better actor than I thought.”
Miley took her parents’ divorce very hard
The father and daughter weren’t the only Cyrus family members who were struggling that year. Billy Ray’s marriage to Tish was faltering. In October 2010, he filed for divorce. The couple managed to patch things up and called off the split about six months later. “Things are really the best they’ve ever been,” Billy Ray said during an appearance on The View.
The reconciliation also improved his relationship with his daughter. “I feel like I got my Miley back in a way,” he said, explaining their communication was better. “I feel like we are the daddy and daughter that we were before Hannah Montana happened.”
Come June 2013, Billy Ray and Tish again appeared to be headed their separate ways when she filed for divorce. But a month later, they changed their minds. The couple remained together until April 2022 when Tish once again initiated a legal breakup. In her filing, she stated the couple hadn’t lived together for more than two years.
Tish later opened up about their divorce during an interview on the podcast Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. “I wanted to make it work, you know, probably for a little too long, like for my own mental health,” Tish shared. “I think was tough on everyone [in the family] in some ways.”
While Miley never publicly spoke out at the time, her parents’ divorce did lead her to distance herself from Billy Ray. She seemingly wasn’t in close contact with her dad as he got engaged to Australian country singer Firerose in August 2022 then married the fellow musician in October 2023. The short-lived union lasted just seven months.
The father-daughter estrangement was on full display at the 2024 Grammy Awards, where Miley collected two trophies. After winning the coveted Record of the Year prize, the “Flowers” singer notably only thanked her mom and sister, not her dad.
Standing in stark contrast to her ties with Billy Ray was Miley’s relationship with Tish. As her mom found new love with actor Dominic Purcell, Miley helped plan the couple’s August 2023 wedding and even walked her mother down the aisle. “To see my mom this happy and in love is very emotional for me,” she told Vogue. “Dom and my mom share the sweetest, most genuine love. It’s almost like it’s for the first time... To stand beside my mother and give her away to Dom is a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
Miley wrote “Secrets” for Billy Ray to help heal their relationship
Earlier this year, Miley finally addressed the rumors about her ongoing estrangement with Billy Ray. She signaled she and her dad were on better terms during a May interview with The New York Times.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’m respecting my parents as individuals instead of as parents—because my mom’s really loved my dad for her whole life, and I think being married to someone in the music industry and not being a part of it is obviously really hard,” Miley explained. “And so I think I took on some of my mom’s hurt as my own because it hurt her more than it hurt me as an adult, and so I owned a lot of her pain.”
Miley added that seeing both of her parents doing well and in love—Billy Ray is now dating actor Elizabeth Hurley—helped mend her rift with her dad. “Now that my mom is so in love with my stepdad, who I completely adore, and now that my dad, I see him finding happiness, too—I can love them both as individuals instead of as a parental pairing,” she said. “I’m being an adult about it.”
This June, Miley revealed more details about her family’s tumultuous moments on the podcast Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. “My family and I have had a really difficult, you know, what did you call your decade? Dark decade. Yeah, we had one of those,” Miley told the former White House intern and author. “Half of us weren’t speaking to each other at one point, and we cleaned all that up. That was a really important part of my year this year, was all of my family putting those lines of communication back together. A lot because of, you know, I had a lot of loyalty to my mom, the way that families do when parents get divorced.”
As a sign of her desire to have a relationship with Billy Ray, Miley wrote the song “Secrets” and gifted it to him for his 64th birthday this August. It features instrumentation by two of Billy Ray’s rock icons, Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham. The track appears on the deluxe edition of Miley’s Something Beautiful album, which released Friday.
“I wanted him to know that I’m grown now, and I’m a safe space for him. I’m as much a friend as I am his kid now,” Miley told NPR. “That’s what this song was really about for me. Being that place that my dad feels safe… if you don’t take my hand as I reach it out, I’m going to chase you because I want that relationship in my life.”
The gesture worked. “It really helped build a bridge between him and I and reconnecting with each other,” she said, calling the song “musical medicine.”
For his part, Billy Ray has shared how much “Secrets” means to him on social media. “Best birthday gift a dad could ever ask for,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “The memories we’ve made together mean the world to me, and seeing you soar with your music makes me prouder every single day.”
It’s only fitting that a song was what helped the pair of performers heal.
Emily Shiffer has worked as a writer for over 10 years, covering everything from health and wellness to entertainment and celebrities. She previously was on staff at SUCCESS, Men's Health, and Prevention magazines. Her freelance writing has been featured in Women's Health, Runner's World, PEOPLE, and more. Emily is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in magazine journalism at the Medill School of Journalism and minored in musicology. Currently residing in Charleston, South Carolina, Emily enjoys instructing barre, surfing, and long walks on the beach with her miniature Dachshund, Gertrude.
