Loretta Lynn’s Life in Photos

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Loretta Lynn Is Born Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

It sounds like a fable: Loretta Lynn was born in humble beginnings, in a log cabin in the coal-mining town of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, on April 14, 1932. She was the second of eight children born into the coal industry, a hard-earned living she’d later immortalize in her music. “When I was growing up with my sisters and brothers, we all sang and rocked the babies to sleep, but that was as far as we ever did,” Lynn told NPR of her life before she became a singer.

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Loretta Lynn Gets Married, Finds Music Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Lynn didn’t pick up a guitar until she was 24, when her husband Oliver, a.k.a., “Mooney” or “Doolittle,” brought her a $17 guitar as a present for their eleventh anniversary. (Lynn married the former moonshine runner when she was just 13.) At the time, the Lynns were living in Washington. “Me and my husband both worked. I took care of a farmhouse, cleaned and cooked for 36 ranch hands before I started singing,” said Lynn, by then already a mother to four children. “So singing was easy. I thought ‘Gee whiz, this is an easy job.’ “

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Loretta Lynn at the Grand Ole Opry Getty

Lynn’s first song, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” helped her earn a recording contract with Decca Records, and she began appearing at the Grand Ole Opry in the 1960s. “I never thought about it being the Grand Ole Opry, because if I had, I never would’ve done it. You just pretty well gotta figure, well, this is something I could do every day,” she told NPR.

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Loretta Lynn Covers Newsweek Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Two years after she became the first-ever female country singer to record a gold album, Lynn blazed another trail as the first female country singer to appear on the cover of Newsweek, in 1972.

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Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty

Lynn and fellow country star Conway Twitty formed a professional partnership in 1971, which resulted in several Top 10 hits (and a persistent rumor that the twosome were were having an affair). It wasn’t her only controversy: In 1974, Lynn released a song about oral contraceptives. “When ‘The Pill’ came out, you’d have thought I’d killed someone,” Lynn said of the less-than-receptive reaction to the song, which was even banned by some radio stations.

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Loretta Lynn and Husband Oliver ‘Doolittle’ Lynn Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Although her husband Doolitte’s womanizing heavily influenced Lynn’s lyrics, he was also her biggest supporter, driving her to early gigs and encouraging her to speak her mind. “The Vietnam War, I just never did get,” Lynn said. “I told Doo, ‘I can’t stand to hear about war, because our boys are going to die over there.’ ” It was Doolittle who encouraged Lynn to write her controversial song “Dear Uncle Sam,” in 1996 — a song she was forbidden to sing in Canada. “He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget it. That belief would be hard to shove out the door,” Lynn said in her autobiography Still Woman Enough. Together, the couple had six children

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Loretta Lynn Gets a Star on the Walk of Fame AP/Shutterstock

The country singer was awarded her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978; she also won four Grammys, countless country music honors and in 1988, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

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Loretta Lynn’s Sister Hits It Big Getty

Lynn poses with her mother Clara and sister, singer Crystal Gayle, at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 1980. Gayle — who took the stage name Crystal at her older sister’s suggestion — also thanked her for her career. “You record what I couldn’t record,” Gayle told the Quad City Times of her sister’s advice to record more pop-friendly music. “She told me to quit singing her songs. She said I would only be compared [to her] and she’s right … that was the best advice I could get.”

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Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn Getty

“I loved being her, I had a sense of humor, I was funny,” said Sissy Spacek, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1981 for her portrayal of Lynn, who handpicked Spacek to play her in the autobiographical film Coal Miner’s Daughter.

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Loretta Lynn with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette Beth Gwinn/Redferns/Getty

The golden girls of country — Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette — came together in 1993 for Honky Tonk Angels, an album of country standards which Parton also produced. “There was that kinship, that sisterhood,” Parton said in a radio interview at the time. “It would be a shame, a disgrace for us not to record something together.”

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Loretta Lynn with George W. Bush Getty

“I used to say music and politics didn’t mix,” Lynn wrote in her memoir, Still Woman Enough. But her friendship with George Bush, Sr., influenced her decision to campaign for his son in 2000. “I want to help little George — well, I guess I better say George W. Bush,” she wrote.

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Loretta Lynn at the 2010 CMA Awards Rick Diamond/Getty

The first woman to win CMA Entertainer of the Year (in 1972) was honored again at the 2010 CMA Awards, when Sheryl Crow and Miranda Lambert sang her song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” — and Lynn herself came out to join them in the performance, earning a standing ovation from the crowd.

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Loretta Lynn at Bonnaroo Erika Goldring/WireImage

In one of her last performances, Lynn, here at 79, took the stage in June 2011 at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Of old age and dying, she once told Time Out Chicago, “I don’t want to do some wrong that I might accidentally go to the other place, so I’m gonna stick with God. If there’s a God, I’m stickin’ with Him.”

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Loretta Lynn in 2019 Jason Kempin/Getty

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Lynn retreated from the public eye following some health issues, she shared a moment with granddaughter Tayla Lynn, Kellie Pickler and Reba McEntire at the 2019 Nashville Songwriters Awards at Ryman Auditorium. Stepping back from awards shows — despite more honors in her later years — she remained active on Twitter and Instagram, sharing memories and well-wishes for fellow country artists. She died at home in Tennessee on Oct. 4, 2022, at the age of 90.