Ebenezer Adurokiya, Reporting
A woman from Ohio has revealed that she believes she was the little girl whose name inspired Dolly Parton’s iconic 1973 song, ‘Jolene’ — a discovery she made nearly 60 years after meeting the country music legend.
Jolenna Dailey said she only discovered the possible connection on August 25, 2026, the day Parton died at the age of 80.
The revelation was shared in a video posted on September 8 by Jolenna’s daughter, Jenna Dailey.
The video begins with a simple question: “Who is Jolene?”
Jolenna, sitting in a rocking chair, responds: “It’s me. I’m Jolene.”
For decades, Parton had told the story of how she came up with the name for her famous song.
In a 2008 interview with NPR, Parton recalled meeting a young girl after one of her appearances on The Porter Wagoner Show in the 1960s.
“One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl — she was probably eight years old at the time,” Parton said.
She recalled that the girl had red hair, beautiful skin and green eyes and had approached her for an autograph.
When Parton asked for her name, the girl replied: “Jolene.”
“That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that,” Parton recalled saying.
The resulting song, ‘Jolene’, became the title track of Parton’s 13th studio album, released in 1973, and went on to become one of her most famous recordings.
Jolenna, who was born in 1961, said people had frequently asked whether she was named after the song.
She would tell them that it was impossible because she was born before the song was released.
Her name is officially spelt Jolenna and pronounced “Jolene-ah”, which she said often prompted her to explain that it was similar to Parton’s ‘Jolene’ but with an additional vowel.
However, she said she never considered that she might actually be the girl Parton had spoken about.
That changed after Parton’s death.
Jolenna said a co-worker informed her about Parton’s death and then asked whether she could possibly be the little girl who inspired the song’s name.
The co-worker searched for Parton’s account of the song’s origins and discovered that the singer had said she got the name from a little girl she met at a concert.
“‘Oh, wow,’” Jolenna recalled saying. “‘I could be Jolene.’”
She then contacted her older brother and asked him to recall the famous person they had met as children.
His answer appeared to provide the missing link.
“Yeah, it was Dolly Parton. It was 1967. We were at Buck Lake Ranch near Angola, Indiana. She just thought we were so cute because we were all dressed alike,” he told her.
“She was so kind and was so sweet.”
Jolenna said a family photograph from the occasion shows the children dressed alike.
She later found a video interview in which Parton discussed the origins of the name ‘Jolene’. According to Jolenna, Parton appeared to pronounce the little girl’s name as “Jolenna” in the interview.
Her brother subsequently confirmed her suspicion.
“Yep, that was you!” he told her.
“Yes, I’m Jolene, and I did not find that out until the day of Dolly’s death,” Jolenna said.
Jolenna was around five or six years old when she met Parton in 1967.
Although she cannot independently verify that she was the girl Parton was referring to, the details of her family’s encounter appear to correspond with Parton’s longstanding account of meeting a young girl whose name inspired the song.
Jolenna said she decided to share the story because she believed people would find it fascinating to know the possible real-life story behind a famous song.
“I’m sharing this because it’s just so fun. You know, we all want the story behind songs or behind movies that we see. We want to know the person, and I thought, ‘This is such a fun thing to share with the world.’”
She said she had seen people ask who the girl was who inspired the name of ‘Jolene’ and whether the girl knew Parton’s story.
“I thought you all would enjoy seeing that,” she said.
For Jolenna, the discovery also offered an emotional reflection on Parton’s character.
“It just really shows, to me, how sweet Dolly was and how she saw people and remembered people, and it just really shows her heart,” she said.
If Jolenna’s account is accurate, a brief childhood encounter at an Indiana concert in 1967 may have provided the name that would later become immortalised in one of country music’s most recognisable songs.
Source: countryrebel.com
