Naomi Judd’s Memorial Service Will Air on Live TV

Naomi Judd‘s public memorial service will air on CMT live on Sunday, the network announced Wednesday. The celebration of the singer’s legendary career will be broadcast live from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, with cooperation from the Judd family. Judd’s daughters Wynonna Judd and Ashley Judd will pay tribute to their mother, and other country music stars will join the event.

“We are sincerely privileged to work alongside Wynonna, Ashley, and Larry to present this live celebration of life for their mother and wife Naomi,” CMT said in a statement. “While we all continue to deeply mourn the loss of such a legendary artist, we are honored to commemorate her legacy alongside the country community, her friends, family, and legions of fans across the world at the perfect venue: The Mother Church of Country Music. This special will celebrate her timeless voice, unforgettable spirit, and the immense impact she left on our genre through the best form of healing we have – music.”

Naomi Judd: A River of Time Celebration will start Sunday, May 15 at 6 p.m. ET/5 p.m. CT. It will air without commercials and executively on CMT. The special is produced by CMT and Sandbox Live, with Margaret Comeaux, Leslie Fram, Jason Owen, and Patrizia DiMaria as executive producers. Additional details will be announced before the memorial.

Judd died on April 30, the day before she and Wynonna were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. Her death also came just weeks after the Judds’ final public performance during the 2022 CMT Music Awards. Judd and Wynonna performed “Love Can Build a Bridge,” which was a smash hit for the mother-daughter duo in 1990.

“Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness,” Wynonna and Ashley said in a joint statement on April 30. “We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.”

Over the weekend, Wynonna and Ashley marked their first Mother’s Day without Judd. Ashley wrote an essay for USA Today, sharing her mother’s journey to motherhood and the importance of supporting motherhood safety. The actress said her heart was filled with “incandescent rage” after her mother’s death because she was “stolen from me by the disease of mental illness, by the wounds she carried from a lifetime of injustices that started when she was a girl. Because she was a girl.”

“My mama was an extraordinary parent under duress: She showed my sister and me the power of having a voice and using it, and there has been no greater lesson,” Ashley wrote. “But motherhood happened to her without her consent. She experienced an unintended pregnancy at age 17, and that led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence.”