Over the past couple of years there's been a lot of rumored drama happening in the Cyrus family, and it all started after Tish Cyrus filed for divorce from Billy Ray Cyrus back in April 2022. Later that year, Billy Ray announced his engagement to Firerose, a singer who he first met on the set of Hannah Montana.
The rumored feud has been brought up again this week after Miley won her first two Grammy awards and didn't thank her father in either of her speeches.
Flash forward to today, Tish and Brandi just appeared on the most recent Call Her Daddy episode, where they talk all about their relationship with Billy Ray and how the divorce affected their entire family.
In the episode, Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper asked Tish, "What led you to finally say 'It's over, end of the marriage'?"
Tish explained that during the pandemic, she had two years to think about her marriage. At the time, Tish was living in their California home by herself while Billy was living in Tennessee. "During that period, I took a really good, hard look at life, my life, and like, 'What was I gonna do?'" she said. "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."
"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."
At this time, when she finally got the hang of life on her own, her mom 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," Tish said. "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."
She later added that her reason for staying with Billy Ray for so long was because of her kids. When asked if she would've left the marriage earlier, she explained, "Yes, but then I'm like, maybe that wouldn't have been right either. I really didn't want Noah to still be young, but looking back on it, it would have been much better for her had I left. It would've been much better."
Brandi went on to explain that growing up, her parents were "so in love." "I have great memories of them together as a kid," she said. "But then I think once I turned into an adult and kinda saw it from a different perspective, a lot of it changed."
"I'll never forget, I was 25, and I was filming a movie in New York and [Billy Ray] was there doing Broadway. It was kinda the first time that it opened my eyes to see some of the things that he was doing, that I didn't know before. It was hurtful. It was hurtful to see him doing it to [Tish], hurtful to see him hiding it from me. It was just hurtful," she said.
She continued, "What's hard for me is like, 10 years ago I understood how you were like, 'I wanna keep the family together, I wanna make the relationship work.' And it's like, you admire all those things, but now 10 years later as a 36-year-old, I wouldn't have wanted myself to put up with that. Now I'm at a point where I'm so happy that she was able to break free from it."
"You were such a martyr for so long for the family," Brandi told her mom. "And just for the sake of keeping it all together, that part of me wishes that you had been able to get yourself out of it sooner, but it's admirable that you didn't, in a way."
Listen to Tish and Brandi's full Call Her Daddy episode here.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.