She’s been through a lot, and she’s ready to tell her story.
Many fans know that Wynonna Judd has been through so much hardship in her personal life over the years, notably with her mother, Naomi, the other half of legendary country duo The Judds, who sadly died by suicide in April of 2022. The Judds were one of the most successful country duos of all time, signing with RCA Records in 1983. Naomi and Wynonna released six records between 1984, kicking things off with their debut record, Wynonna & Naomi, and ending their career with Love Can Build a Bridge.
Both were impressive vocalists with a ton of talent that meshed perfectly with the natural chemistry of being mother and daughter. While they certainly had their issues over the years, Wynonna loved her mother deeply and was obviously devastated when she passed away.
In a new wide-ranging interview with Shawn Ryan that went nearly 5 HOURS long, Wynonna walked Shawn through her entire life, including everything she went through on the awful day her mother tragically passed away, her tough upbringing and much more.
She went into a lot of detail about how she learned that her who her biological father was when she was 30-years-old, as for all of those years before, she thought her dad was the same biological dad to her sister Ashley, Michael Ciminella. Apparently, everyone knew but her, even Ashley and people in their hometown in Kentucky… her biological father’s name was Charles Jordan, who had been a high school boyfriend of Naomi’s. He unfortunately passed away before Wynonna could ever meet him, but she did later find out she had a half brother through him and she has connected with.
On the day of Wynonna’s performance with her mom at the Super Bowl in 1994, Michael decided to tell her he wasn’t her biological father, and got backstage to the dressing rooms. Thankfully, her manager figured out what was going on and stopped him:
“Everyone kept it from me, even the town. Well, as the story goes, Michael, Ashley‘s biological father, decided that he was gonna tell me. So he showed up at the Super Bowl. I was getting ready to perform at halftime at the Super Bowl, and he walked into the dressing room to tell me.
And my manager at the time knew what was coming, and sort of kept him from doing so. I guess he called him out in the hallway and said, ‘You’re not gonna do this to Wynonna right before she performs at the freaking Super Bowl.’ And he didn’t tell me, he decided not to.
We rode the bus home, I woke up at my home the next morning, and got a phone call from a therapist that was seeing Ashley and Mom and I.”
Wynonna, Ashley and Naomi had been seeing a family therapist because this was during the time Naomi was very sick with hepatitis C, though she eventually got over the virus after many years. Wynonna thought the meeting would be about something with her mom’s disease, but little did she know what was coming.
When Ashley finally blurted it out because Naomi wouldn’t say it, Wynonna recalls the first words out of her mouth as her world was flipped upside down:
“Because at this point Mom, is really sick, really sick, and we’re doing a lot of family therapy. And I walk in a door to see Mom weeping, and Ashley sitting next to her, and with as much prompting as possible, trying to get Mom to say something.
I thought it was that she was either more sick, or she was gonna have to quit the music business. Ashley blurted it out. She said, ‘Michael Simon is not your biological father.’ And the very first comment out of my mouth was, ‘Mom, it’s okay.’ Talk about codependent. And that’s where I learned it, in the therapy session.
I was pretty pissed. Pretty pissed. And the fact that Mom didn’t do it, still to this day, challenges me to try to be better, not bitter. But I’m struggling at times with the fact that she wasn’t the one that told me. Ashley knew since she was 11. The whole town knew, my manager knew, everybody knew.”
I can’t even imagine what that must have been like, and Wynonna explained to Shawn that she thinks Michael wanted to do it at the Super Bowl out of spite and to get back at her mom:
“I still to this day do not know. I think it’s because he wanted to get back at Mom. Yeah. Why would he pick that spot? That’s only the biggest show in town. So there’s that. Wasn’t like, let’s take a walk. So yeah, it’s crazy.”
It was the first time she realized she had biological father she never met, and Wynonna explained that she was pregnant with her first child, Elijah, at the time. She was very close with her grandparents, Mammaw and Papaw Ciminella as she refers to them, who were Michael’s parents and watched after her and Ashley for much of their childhood as their parents were very young and “distracted,” as she put it.
She said they were her only “safe place” of her childhood, and it was “crushing” for her to learn that she wasn’t biologically related to them:
“Correct. And I was pregnant with my son Elijah at the time that I learned, so talk about ironic. Yeah, I found out at 30 and I was devastated. Because my Mammaw and Papaw Ciminella were my world, they were everything to me.
My parents were so young, 17 and 18, and Mammaw and Papaw Ciminella gave me the only real safe place of my childhood. So the fact that I’m learning that they’re not biological was crushing. Just crushing.”
It’s just so crazy that so many people knew for so long before Wynonna did, and she said that Michael had known since her mom was pregnant with Ashley, as she told him out of spite:
“When Mom was pregnant with Ashley… but he let me know it, I just didn’t know it, for sure.”
She went on to talk about all of the awful things he made her do when she was way too young, like driving a stick shift vehicle at age 12, for example, and it’s heartbreaking that she grew up that was and went through so much as a very young girl, something that understandably still affects her to this day.
She’s an incredibly strong woman, I learned so much about her through this interview and her transparency and vulnerability is very admirable and inspiring.
Wynonna wrote a song on her new album The Hard Truth called “Girl Who Could Sing” about the whole experience of finding out about her father, and you can check it out here:
The full Shawn Ryan Show interview is available here:
