Billy Ray Cyrus‘ ex-wife Tish is opening up about the difficult decision to end her marriage to the singer in 2022.

Cyrus and Tish’s divorce came after nearly three decades of marriage. But in a new episode of the Sibling Rivalry With Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson podcast, Tish admits that they might have been happier if they’d gone their separate ways earlier.

“I wanted to make it work, probably for a little too long, like, for my own mental health,” she admits in conversation with the podcast hosts as well as her daughter, Brandi.

“There became a point that, like, I didn’t have a choice.”

• Cyrus and Tish got married in 1993 and had five children, including superstar Miley Cyrus and pop star Noah Cyrus.
• Trish filed for divorce in 2022.
• “Irreconcilable differences” were listed as the reason for the split. In the paperwork, Trish indicated that they hadn’t lived together in over two years.
• By that point, the couple had previously filed for divorce twice — once in 2010 and again in 2013 — but had always eventually reconciled.

Looking back on the split, Tish says that she was adamantly against getting a divorce for a long time, especially since she grew up as a child of happily married parents.

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“I was an only child and had the best upbringing and best parents and never went through anything like that,” she recounts. “So I don’t really know how it affects you, but … it was definitely something that was probably hard on them, no matter how you do it.”

The Cyrus’ kids were all adults by the time they split, and she says she worked hard on making it “the easiest as possible for everyone involved.” Still, there was no getting around how “tough” it is to go through an event like your parents ending their marriage.

“My son Trace for example … he was bummed. He was like, ‘I wish my mom and dad would never get … I wish that wouldn’t have happened,'” Tish remembers.

Since divorcing Cyrus, Tish has remarried Prison Break star Dominic Purcell.

Meanwhile, Cyrus married singer-songwriter Firerose in late 2023, but filed for divorce from her the following May. They exchanged abuse allegations amid the split, and Cyrus slapped Firerose with a restraining order to stop her from using his credit card.