Billy Ray Cyrus gives rare update on relationship with daughter Miley after years-long estrangement
Topics: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus
Thomas Bamford
Featured Image Credit: (Photo by David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Topics: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus
Billy Ray Cyrus has given a rare update on his relationship with daughter Miley, revealing the pair have found their way back to each other through the one thing that's always connected them: music.
Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus experienced a multi-year estrangement primarily triggered by her parents' contentious 2022 divorce.
The messy split caused deep divides within the family, leading Miley to heavily side with her mother, Tish, and actively omit her father from her Grammy acceptance speeches
Asked how music had helped repair things between him and Miley after years of rumoured tension, Billy Ray didn't hold back on just how far they've come.
Advert
“It's been so good,” he said. “That's our lifeblood and how we communicate.
"Since she was a baby, she's been on this ride and seen the peaks and valleys and knows when you're in this business it's all a circus, and at some point, hopefully you get to play in the big top.”
He went even further, insisting the relationship is in the strongest place it's ever been.
“Our relationship has never been better,” he said.
It's not the first time the pair's relationship has made headlines. Back in 2025, Miley addressed the rumours herself during a sit-down interview with the New York Times, after months of speculation about tension within the Cyrus family.
Asked directly whether she was still estranged from her father, Miley was clear. “No. I think timing is everything,” she said.
“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.”
She went on to explain how growing older, and watching both her parents move into new relationships, had shifted her perspective on the entire situation.
“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,” she said.
“But 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.”
Miley said reaching that mindset hadn't been easy, and had taken some conscious effort to get past old instincts.
“I'm being an adult about it,” she said.
“At first it's hard, because the little kid in you reacts before the adult in you can go, 'Yes, that's your dad, but that's just another person that deserves to be in his bliss and to be happy'. My child self has caught up.”
The comments came shortly after Miley had also moved to shut down separate rumours that she was at odds with her mother, Tish, after appearing to be unfollowed by her on Instagram. “I rarely comment on rumors but my mama and I are too tight for anything to ever come between us,” Miley wrote at the time.
“She's my best friend. Like a lot of moms, she doesn't know how to work her phone and somehow unfollowed me, simple, coincidental and uninteresting.”
She added that, in her thirties, keeping her family close had become more important to her than ever.
“My dad and I have had our challenges over the years,” she said. “Now, in my thirties, family is my priority above all else.”