Wynonna Judd Just Met Her Brother for the First Time

Wynonna Judd opened up about a big moment in her family, sharing on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy on Wednesday that she recently met her brother for the very first time. “I met my brother yesterday,” Judd told Andy Cohen. “I have a brother I’ve never met and I called him. He lives in Kentucky and his name is Michael and I called him on his birthday and I said, ‘Hi.’”

Judd learned about her brother when she was 30 years old and discovered that she and sister Ashley Judd do not share the same biological father. “I found out about all of this in 1993 when I was pregnant with Elijah… I found out, you know, part of my life that I thought, you know, this man who was my biological father is not,” she shared. “And it’s Ashley’s father.”

“I had a choice,” the 56-year-old recalled. “I had to decide whether I was better or bitter and in music, that’s what we do. We talk about the hard stuff and we talk about the, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want to be here anymore. My heart is broken.’ That’s what country music is. We’re stories about real life.”

Judd shared that she has her conversation with Michael “on tape” and plans on writing a song about it. “I have the recording, Andy, of me saying, ‘Hi, uh, this is your sister.’ And I’ve never said that before. And I’m going to put it in the middle of a song somewhere. That’s the way I work,” she said, adding that she likes to “apply real life” to her songs.

“I’ve got two children. I’ve got three bonus children and my two children that I birthed. They’re grown,” she continued, joking, “You know, I’ve got one on parole, one on patrol, baby.”

The singer added that she thinks her best songs come from her own experiences. “I met my brother yesterday,” she emphasized. “He’s 53. I’m 56 years old, and my father died before I met him and that’s part of my testimony.”

“The artists I’ve met, from The Rolling Stones to Dolly Parton to everything I’ve experienced… Loretta Lynn, I talk to her every week and I listen to her stories,” Judd said. “That’s what I want to do is I want to breathe life into the fans. I want to breathe life into people by singing the aching part of life and joy part of life. It’s intertwined.”