Country Music Legend Loretta Lynn Dies at 90

Farewell to an icon. Loretta Lynn has died at age 90.

The country music superstar’s family confirmed the news in a statement to the Associated Press on Tuesday, October 4. “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the statement read. The family noted that a memorial for the beloved songwriter will be announced later.

The “You Ain’t Woman Enough” singer was hospitalized for a stroke in May 2017 and canceled tour dates and an album release. Five months later, she returned to the spotlight last October when she spoke at an event celebrating her friend Alan Jackson‘s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Lynn appeared frail as she walked out onto the stage with support and said that Jackson was the only person that could make her leave her house.

In January 2018, she fell and broke her hip at her Tennessee home, prompting her sister, singer Crystal Gayle, to ask fans for “love and prayers.”

Lynn, who was born Loretta Webb in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, was the most awarded female country recording artist, selling more than 45 million albums worldwide.

Married at the age of 15, she learned to play a $17 guitar that her husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, bought for her and cut her first record, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” in 1960. She scored her first number-one song seven years later, and went on to have 15 more chart-topping hits including “Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).”

Her best-selling 1976 autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, was made into an Oscar-winning film, with Sissy Spacek getting an Academy Award for her portrayal of the star.

Loretta and her husband, whose nickname was Doo, had six children and were married for 48 years until his death in 1996. The singer later revealed in her 2002 autobiography, Still Woman Enough, that her husband cheated on her and they had a tumultuous relationship. “He never hit me one time that I didn’t hit him back twice,” she told CBS News in 2002.

She wrote songs about fighting with Doo and his drinking and infidelity, telling Time in 2016 that when she sang them, “I knew that women would like them because all women live the same way, you know? Most women.”

Lynn, who had 70 songs on the charts as a solo artist and duet partner, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Country Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1999. She awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama in 2013.

“This coal miner’s daughter gave voice to a generation, singing what no one wanted to talk about and saying what no one wanted to think about,” Obama, 61, said at the medal ceremony. “And now, over 50 years after she cut her first record … Loretta Lynn still reigns as the rule-breaking, record-setting queen of country music.”