A spokesperson for the Jolene singer insisted Dolly had \u201cnever\u201d planned to be at the event.<\/p>\n
Her representative told Entertainment Weekly: \u201cShe never had plans to attend. If she were going to attend, then the Opry would have promoted that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October, Dolly took to social media to reassure fans she was \u201cokay\u201d amid mounting fears for her health.<\/p>\n
In a video message posted on Instagram, Dolly \u2013 who had been shooting some commercials for the Grand Ole Opry \u2013 explained: \u201cEverybody thinks that I am sicker than I am. Do I look sick to you? I\u2019m working hard here!<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway, I wanted to put everybody\u2019s mind at ease, those of you that seem to be real concerned, which I appreciate. I appreciate your prayers, \u2018cause I\u2019m a person of faith. I can always use the prayers for anything and everything. But I want you to know that I\u2019m okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
The country singer explained that some of her \u201cproblems\u201d were linked to the aftermath of losing Carl Dean, her husband, in March.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cBack when my husband Carl was very sick, that was for a long time, and then when he passed, I didn\u2019t take care of myself, so I let a lot of things go that I should\u2019ve been taking care of.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo anyway, when I got around to it, the doctor said, we need to take care of this. We need to take care of that. Nothing major, but I did have to cancel some things so I could be closer to home, closer to Vanderbilt [University Medical Centre], where I\u2019m kind of having a few treatments here and there, but I wanted you to know that I\u2019m not dying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dolly explained that she was keen to address the speculation and joked that she\u2019s \u201cnot ready to die yet\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of rumours flying around, but I figured if you heard it from me, you\u2019d know that I was okay. So anyhow, that\u2019s what I wanted to say and I\u2019m not ready to die yet. I don\u2019t think God is through with me and I ain\u2019t done working. So I love you for caring, and keep praying for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spokesperson for the Jolene singer insisted Dolly had \u201cnever\u201d planned to be at the event. Her representative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[135829,1975,19103,6325,9063,124,25014,156,10813,1364,111,139,5006,69,9716,135830,28720,11744,1533,24529],"class_list":["post-227749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-80th","tag-at","tag-attend","tag-birthday","tag-celebration","tag-could","tag-dolly","tag-entertainment","tag-grand","tag-her","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-old","tag-opry","tag-parton","tag-upcoming","tag-will","tag-wishes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}