Billy Ray Cyrus shares rare social media message to daughter Miley in birthday tribute

Billy Ray Cyrus has shared a rare social media message to his daughter Miley Cyrus for her thirty second birthday.

The 63-year-old singer posted a tribute to his daughter on Instagram on Saturday (November 23), including a series of throwback photos of the pair.

“Happy Birthday Mile !!! Hope it’s the best one ever ! (I know I dropped the “y”. That’s what I called @mileycyrus most of her life.),” he wrote in the caption.

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Along with two photos of Billy holding his daughter as a baby, the post included another snap of them at the 2009 premiere of Hannah Montana: The Movie, based on the TV show of the same name. He shared another picture of them onstage at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival and a fifth photo of them on the set of the 2021 concert special,  Miley Cyrus Presents Stand By You.

While Miley didn’t publicly respond to her father’s tribute, she did send her gratitude to all her fans on her Instagram Story. “Thank you all for the birthday wishes…My gift to my fans is celebrating my six billion plaques with you,” she wrote, referring to how six of her songs recently reached over one billion streams on Spotify.

The “Flowers” singer is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, who officially divorced in 2022 after 29 years of marriage. That same year, the “Achy Breaky Heart” artist got engaged to Firerose, whom he split from earlier this year after seven months of marriage. In 2023, Tish got engaged to her now-husband, Dominic Purcell.

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Along with Miley, Billy Ray and Tish share four other children: Brandi, 37, Trace, 35, Braison, 30, and Noah, 24. The country singer also shares his 32-year-old son, Christopher Cody, with ex-girlfriend Kristin Luckey.

When Miley and a few of her other siblings missed her dad’s nuptials, family riff rumors spurred, especially since the “Used To Be Young” vocalist was the maid of honor at her mom’s ceremony to Purcell.

Bill Ray’s birthday tribute to Miley also comes months after fans speculated that she snubbed him at the Grammy Awards earlier this year. When accepting the award for “Record of the Year” for her song “Flowers,” Miley sweetly mentioned some members of her family, but not her.

“I want to thank everyone that’s standing on this stage right now Tom, Tyler, Michael, and Greg,” she said, before quipping about about not missing anyone’s name in her speech, which fans believed was shade towards her father. “I don’t think I forgot anyone,” the “Wrecking Ball” singer said. “But I may have forgotten underwear. Bye!”

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In June, Miley also made a subtle dig at her father, after David Letterman asked her if she’d consider her dad to be her hero, during his Netflix special, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

“I mean, honestly, my mom is my hero,” she confessed, before noting how much she still cares for Billy Ray. “Um, so I think a lot of, like, his... perspective on reality and on life, I’ve inherited from him more so than the way that I was raised, which really my mom raised me.”

However, Miley still acknowledged that her father shaped who she is and that if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have the career she does today.

“Without my dad, who I am as a person wouldn’t exist because my dad as a creative, and like, as an artist, and the way his brain works has always made me feel safer in my mind,” the “Malibu” singer said. 

“He also has a relationship and a foot on the ground to nature and to the real. And he always did, even when he was super famous. I’m grateful for being able to watch him ahead of me. He’s almost, like, given me this map – there is a map of what to do and what not to do – and he’s guided me on both.”