No, because it was her spirit.

I mean, no matter what was happening, she was either going to go with it or it was going to get better.”

Cher and Parton’s friendship dated back to 1978, when the two met at the home of a manager they’d just discovered they shared.

In her 2024 memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One, Cher recalled the moment vividly: “an extraordinary-looking woman with a mᴀss of blond curls,” standing in the room.

Her manager pulled her aside and told her not to judge based on appearance — “You’re going to love her.

She’s a fabulous country singer. Her name is Dolly Parton.” He was right.

“He was right,” Cher wrote, “and she is still my friend to this day.”

That friendship played out publicly almost immediately.

Later in 1978, Cher invited Parton to appear on her ABC variety special, casting her as an angel sent to guide Cher’s character back onto the right path — a role that, decades later, both women would return to in conversation with something like disbelief at how fitting it now seemed.

Speaking to CBS after Parton’s death, Cher brought it up unprompted: “She played an angel,” she said, her voice catching.

“So how perfect.”

Asked what set Parton apart as a performer, across a career spent in the presence of some of the biggest names in entertainment, Cher didn’t point to her voice or her songwriting.

She described something smaller and more specific: “She walked across the stage, and every once in a while she would bend over to reach out to the people that were closest to her, and she smiled.

I mean, that’s a gift. You don’t come by that gift.”

And when King asked what she’d miss most, Cher didn’t need time to think.

“Her laugh,” she said — nothing more elaborate than that.

It’s a detail that, coming from someone who has known Parton for nearly half a century, carries its own kind of weight: not the accolades, not the catalog of hits, not the philanthropy that reshaped childhood literacy for millions of kids, but the specific, familiar sound of a friend laughing.

Cher also offered a brief, admiring read on Parton’s famously careful avoidance of political controversy throughout her career.

“Because she was smart,” Cher said, adding after a pause, “she was tough, too.”

By her own account on air, Cher hadn’t fully processed the loss in the moment.

“We were just talking,” she told King. “I was fine, then I started crying.”