Dolly Parton’s niece, Jada Star Roberts, says her aunt was thinking of others in her final days, choosing to keep her health problems quiet so as not to worry her fans.
“We … kept all that stuff real private,” Roberts, who goes by the stage name Jada Star, said during an exclusive interview with “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi. “And so, she never wanted to worry anybody.”
Roberts, who is also a singer and a songwriter, said that her aunt’s death has been “really difficult and very surreal” for the family, but the outpouring of love from the country music legend’s fans has been “really bittersweet.”
“All of these tributes have helped so much to help us all through it,” Parton’s niece said about the support from her aunt’s fans.
Parton, a legendary country music and pop singer, died Aug. 25 at age 80 following a battle with cancer. The music icon’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, announced her death on behalf of the Parton and Owens family, saying the country music icon “has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus.”
Reflecting on her aunt and her passing, Roberts told Extra, “I can’t remember a life without her. She would also tell us to start drying it up and start trying to get back to work and love each other real hard. She was just a trip.”
Roberts appeared on the ABC reality competition series “Claim to Fame” in July 2023 under the pseudonym “Jane.” Parton’s niece was one of a dozen relatives of celebrities on the show, in which the contestant who can successfully conceal their identity for the entire season wins $100,000.
She was eliminated from the show after she failed to identify another contestant’s famous relative. Once she was eliminated, her connection to Parton was revealed, and her aunt appeared in a special video message recorded for her niece.
“I went to [Dolly Parton] first. I said, ‘Is it OK if I do this?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely. It’s OK,’” Roberts recalled during her recent interview with Extra. “She said, ‘Go out there. Don’t show your butt.’ And she said, ‘Keep your room clean.’ I was surprised as everyone else when she showed up, and so those tears were quite genuine.”
When asked if there is anything Roberts wished she could have said to her aunt while she was still alive, Parton’s niece said as she fought back tears, “I think I would just say thank you so much and I love you so much, and I know you’re okay.”
Following the passing of the legendary singer-songwriter, fans of Parton have paid tribute to her and expressed grief over her death.
Earlier this week, a mother and her daughters went to pay their respects and lay flowers at Parton’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star, but they were surprised to discover that someone had vandalized it.
Lore Corona, also known online as wildsheroams.life, shared a video of the damaged star online, saying that she and her daughters were visiting California and had decided to see it.
“One of my daughters had flowers, and we were just going to come and kind of pay our respects; you know, she has done a lot for the world basically,” Corona said in the video.
The star was damaged about 10 minutes before the mother and daughters arrived, Corona said. She showed the vandalized star, which has scratch marks over Parton’s name, then shared footage of her and her daughters cleaning the late singer’s star.
“This was so sad, but we should follow her lessons to always be kind and loving. We were honored to love on her,” Corona said in a statement on social media.
“When we arrived, a custodian was cleaning and told us a woman kicked candles around then with the shards of one scratched the star,” she explained. “Then a man came and stole the flowers that were there. He left soon after we got there and we got to work.”
