For years, before the rest of the world was awake, Dolly Parton and her sister Stella would pour a coffee and pick up the phone. Every Tuesday morning, just before sunrise, the two would talk. Nobody else was invited. It was theirs.

That ritual ended on Tuesday August 25, when Dolly Parton died at the age of 80 following a brief battle with cancer at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville. She was surrounded by loved ones. And it was Stella who, in the days that followed, gave the world a glimpse of who Dolly really was when the rhinestones came off.

Stella posted her tribute on social media, opening with the words: "My big sister Dolly got her wings this past Tuesday." She said she was certain Dolly had made it to heaven right on time, arriving "in all her sparkles and shine."

The tribute was rooted in the small and private rather than the famous and grand. Stella wrote about the two of them as "little farm girls," recalling how Dolly had always been an early riser who liked to say: "Shoot Tedda we get more work done before the sun comes up than most folks do all day long."

She described their Tuesday morning phone calls as a fixture of her week, a time when the two sisters would talk freely, with Stella sometimes criticising and complaining about things in the news or the world, and Dolly cutting through it all with characteristic perspective. "She would laugh and say: 'Shoot Tedda, we've got more important things to do than worry about their silly asses,'" Stella wrote. "She was right and she proved it every day."

Stella described her sister as "one of the most generous, thoughtful and kind people I've ever known," revealing that even in her final weeks, Dolly had told her she was willing to let doctors try experimental treatments on her, not out of hope for herself, but purely so that the results might help future patients.

She closed with a message to fans that felt entirely in keeping with everything Dolly had stood for throughout her life. "She left the world a better place by being in it," Stella wrote, "so let's follow her example."

She also added: "My Tuesday morning coffee time will never be the same but her love, respect and goodness will remain. Dolly loved the world and everyone in it."

Dolly Parton sold more than 160 million albums across a career spanning six decades, wrote more than 3,000 songs, and built a philanthropic legacy that included the Imagination Library, which has distributed over 304 million books to children around the world since 1995. She donated $1 million toward the research that helped produce the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. She funded children's hospitals, wildfire relief funds, flood victims and scholarship programmes for students in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee.

She was predeceased by her husband Carl Dean, who died in March 2025 after nearly 60 years of marriage. At her own request, a small private service is being held for immediate family only. Fans have been asked to pay tribute by tagging her social media accounts and donating to the Imagination Library in her memory.

Every Tuesday morning, just before sunrise, Stella Parton will pick up the phone and remember.