Tish Cyrus in ‘shock mode’ after Billy Ray Cyrus divorce

Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus and Tish Cyrus attend the 61st Annual Grammy Awards at Staples Center on February 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Photo / Getty Images

Tish Cyrus was in “shock mode” after she divorced Billy Ray Cyrus.

The 58-year-old manager was heartbroken when she and the 64-year-old singer called their relationship quits in April 2022 after 29 years of marriage and two previously withdrawn divorce filings.

Appearing on the latest episode of 51-year-old Chelsea Handler’s Dear Chelsea podcast, Tish admitted: “I didn’t ever really think I would get a divorce. That was not in the cards at all for me. I was devastated. I’d been married for so long, since I was, like, 24 years old.”

Tish, who has daughters Miley, 33, Noah, 26, and Brandi, 38, as well as sons Trace, 37, and Braison, 31, with Billy Ray, was “stoned” after the breakup.

She remembered: “I was in shock mode. I don’t know where I was at.”

Later in the podcast episode, Tish gave advice to a listener who was trying to move on after a divorce as a mum.

She said: “For me, it was really having to really make my brain focus on how things had gotten, how things were, instead of how they should be or could be.

“When you have kids with someone, it makes it so much harder, and especially my kids are older, so there was none of the going back and forth having to communicate, which I’m sure is so hard.

“I don’t know how you take the emotion out of it, or how you change how you feel. But I think you can look at things in that way of, like, you know how it could have been if only this; those kind of fantasy, and the fantasy from what is your reality. That was the hardest part for me.”

Tish added: “It’s so hard to believe when you’re in it that things can get better, that there is someone else for you out there. But I think when you get grounded in reality of what it is, is when you actually can move forward and bring great things into your life.”

And it was a friend who encouraged the producer to date her now-husband, 56-year-old actor Dominic Purcell.

Tish recalled: “One of my friends just said, ‘If you could go out with anyone in the world, like who is your dream guy?’

“When she asked me that, I had always loved the show Prison Break, and I just always thought Dominic was so dreamy, and just like so gorge. And so when she said that, and she happened to be an agent, and I was like, ‘Dominic Purcell!’

“And she was like, ‘You need to DM him right now.’ And I was like, ‘What? I’m not doing that!’ And she was like, ‘No, you’re doing it’. And so I did.”

Tish and Dominic struck up a romance and got hitched in Malibu, California, in August 2023.

Billy Ray, meanwhile, married singer Firerose in 2023, but they divorced the following year.

The Achy Breaky Heart songster then coupled up with model-and-actress Elizabeth Hurley, 60, and they went Instagram official in 2025.