Jeannie Seely, a country star of the ’60s and ’70s who had been a favorite of Grand Ole Opry audiences from her induction in 1967 up until the present day, died Friday at age 85.
Seely last performed on the Opry on Feb. 22 of this year — her 5,397th Opry performances, which surpassed the number for any other performer in the history of the century-old live broadcast. Not just on the Opry, but generally speaking, Seely was considered to be the oldest regularly working female country singer. (Among all ongoing Opry stars, Bill Anderson still had a couple of years on her; he is 87.)
Beyond the Opry, Seely was a familiar name to younger generations of country fans as the host of a weekly SiriusXM program that had run on the Willie’s Roadhouse channel since 2018.
Her publicist reported Seely died at 5 p.m. CT at Summit Medical Center in Hermitage, Tennessee, due complications from an intestinal infection. Although she continued to perform on the Opry through February of this year, she had recently suffered from multiple health issues, which this year included two emergency abdominal surgeries and multiple back surgeries.
Dolly Parton was among the stars quickly weighing in with thoughts about Seely’s passing. “I have known Jeanie Seely since we were early on in Nashville,” Parton wrote in a message on Instagram. “She was one of my dearest friends. I think she was one of the greater singers in Nashville and she had a wonderful sense of humor. We had many wonderful laughs together, cried over certain things together and she will be missed.”
Photo of Jeannie Seely circa 1970. Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Michael Ochs Archives
Sunny Sweeney, one of the younger-generation country traditionalists who revered Seely, spoke about learning about the death while playing the Opry Friday night. “Tonight I played the Opry for the 77th time for the release of my new album that came out today,” Sweeney wrote on Instagram. “I was set up in Jeannie Seely’s dressing room and had a 4:40 p.m. rehearsal. My rehearsal got moved to 5:40 at the last minute so I was sitting in her room, where I’ve spent so many nights with her and Gene [her late husband] over the years, when she passed on across town at 5:00 pm. I can’t explain what that coincidence will mean to me for the rest of my life. I will miss you forever, my friend… and I promise to carry your torch with pride forever. I loved you hard and knowing you was one of the greatest honors of my life… I cried on stage and I know she was rolling her eyes at me, telling me to not mess up my eye makeup.”
In 2021, Variety profiled Seely’s history with the Opry, visiting her backstage at the Opry House just prior to the show’s 5,000th broadcast. “Jeannie Seely is living proof that, in country music circles, it’s possible to get hipper as you get older,” the article began.
She talked then about what it was like to hang with the late Little Jimmy Dickens in the dressing room we were meeting in. “I’d had had some vocal issues because I have some esophagus issues, and I went to him and I said, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘Lower the keys and tell more bullshit.’” She told Variety that Dickens influenced the tone of her act. “In my early years, I remember there was like Eddie Arnold, who was always a serious singer, and then there’d be a comedian. But it was Jimmy Dickens that was the first one that made me realize that you can do both — be a serious singer and also be funny — and that’s what I wanted to do.”
Seely’s first major hit was 1966’s “Don’t Touch Me,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard country chart. (It also became her lone Hot 100 entry, peaking there at No. 85. She reached the country top 10 twice more as a solo artist, with “I’ll Love You (More Than You Need)” (No. 10 in 1967) and “Can I Sleep in Your Arms” (No. 6 in 1973), and once as the duet partner of Jack Greene, with “Wish I Didn’t Have to Miss You” (No. 2 in 1969). Her other top 20 hits included “It’s Only Love,” “A Wanderin’ Man,” “Much Oblige,” “What Has Gone Wrong With Our World” (the latter two with Greene) and “Lucky Ladies.”
Her run of charting singles lasted through 1977, though she continued to release new albums as recently as 2020’s “An American Classic,” which included collaborations with Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Lorrie Morgan, Waylon Payne and others.
She won her sole Grammy for “Don’t Touch Me” in the Best Country & Western Recording category in 1967. Seeley earned two additional Grammy nods in subsequent years.
A Pennsylvania native, Seely spent time in Los Angeles working at a bank and then as a secretary for Liberty/Imperial Records before moving to Nashville in 1965 with $50 in her pocket. Her first husband, legendary songwriter Hank Cochran, gave her a leg up when the rejections came fast and furious.
“I had met Hank Cochran in California, as I had Dottie West and Justin Tubb. They kind of opened some doors,” she said in an interview with Classic Bands. “Hank took one of my demo tapes to several of the places. Then later, eventually, including Fred Foster at Monument, Hank was so frustrated by it. I remember he took me into Monument, into Fred’s office about 5:30 one evening when everybody else was leaving the office. He handed me a guitar and said, ‘Now sit there and sing until Fred signs you.’ I always laughed later. I said I don’t know whatever Fred finally heard something in that little session or whether he was just hungry and wanted to go to dinner and said, ‘Okay, okay, whatever.’ But thank goodness he did. He just said, ‘Okay. I hear what you’re hearing. Let’s find some songs and we’ll go ahead and record.’”
Seely encountered no small amount of sexism along the way. There was even a level of patronizing embedded when she was complimented by no less a public figure than President Richard Nixon, who watcher her in his visit to the Opry in 1974 and said, “Some girls have looks but can’t sing. Others can sing but don’t have looks. Jeannie Seely’s got them both.”
There was a glass ceiling at the Opry for many years of her tenure there. “One of the things I have a lot of pride in is the fast that the doors are finally open for women to host. That was a door a lot of people don’t realize in the newer generation, that those doors were not only slammed shut and locked, they were sealed against women; that was a door that I beat on constantly trying to get them to change that. I remember when Mr. Durham was the manager, I used to go to him all the time and I’d say, ‘Okay, I know you’ve told me before why it is women can’t host the Opry, but I forget,’ and he’d say, ‘It’s tradition Jeannie,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s right, it’s tradition, it just smells like discrimination.” Things turned around, though, with a change of administration. “I was very aware though that when Bob Whitaker came on as manager and he opened the doors and allowed me especially to do that, I knew that I had to do my homework, I knew I had to pay attention, I had to do it right or the door would be slammed again, not only on me but on a lot of them comin’ behind me.”
Seely told Variety in 2021 that she never told the Opry no when they invited her to perform. “If the phone rings and I see it’s Dan (Rogers), I never say ‘Hello.’ I just say, ‘Yes.’”
At the Opry, she said, there was little generation gap. “I try to always impress this on young artists that didn’t grow up on the Opry: It is not a normal concert venue. It’s not a normal show. There’s usually three generations represented on this stage, and you’ll see three generations in the audience, you don’t see that anywhere else. At sporting things, there might be in the crowd, but not on the field, you know? So I think that’s one thing that makes the Opry so unique.”
Saturday night’s edition of the Grand Ole Opry will be dedicated to Seely.
Jeannie Seely performs at Durango Music Spot at Fan Fair X on Thursday, June 9 at the 2016 CMA Music Festival in downtown Nashville.
Kayla Schoen/CMA
Seely’s husband, Gene Ward, died in December. Her three siblings also preceded her in death.
She did not have any children, but there was a big asterisk on that, as she explained in an interview with Country Stars Central. “I didn’t give birth to any children, but I had three stepsons when I was married with Hank Cochran and helped raise three stepsons there,” she said, “and I helped raise two of Jack Greene’s sons because I was the only one there. So, I have had a little experience, but the grandbabies are all a new experience for me. It’s funny; I was talking to somebody the other day and she said, ‘I found out what people meant when they said that if I’d had known grandchildren were so great, I would have just had them and skipped the children.’ I said, ‘Well, actually that’s what I did.’”
Among other testimonials, Sarah Trahern, CEO of the Country Music Association, said, “While I’ve had the privilege of working with Jeannie Seely over the past 25 years, my immediate grief is deeply personal. Early in my tenure at CMA, I shared unforgettable lunches with Jeannie and Jo Walker Meador, full of stories that were occasionally irreverent but always fascinating. Jeannie was at the very first Fan Fair with Jack Greene and remained a beloved fixture for decades. She once told me a hilarious story about switching credentials with Dottie West just to keep people on their toes. When the CMA Board honored her with the Joe Talbot Award in 2023, it was for more than her music and fan relationships — it was for her spark. She mentored countless artists, especially women, and while they learned from her confidence and wit, she reminded us she was learning from them too. That humility was part of her magic.”
Asked then what she hoped she would be remembered for, Seeley said, “Well, I hope that people will remember me as being a good person, number one, and I hope that they will remember me with a smile. I hope that I have made people laugh, I hope that will be a good memory for everybody and I hope they will remember that, number one, I was still and still am a fan. I never stopped being a fan of country music and certainly never stopped being in awe of the Grand Ole Opry. I hope that they’ll remember that I was just one of them; I just sang and wrote songs for a living.”
Jeannie Seely performs at the Greased Lightning Riverfront Park Stages “ROPE Legends Show” on Sunday, June 13 in Downtown Nashville during the 2004 CMA Music Festival, “Country Music’s Biggest Party.”
Theresa Montgomery/CMA