Wynonna Judd recently released a new album, The Hard Truth. It is intensely personal. With that LP as a backdrop, she is speaking out now about some of the most trying times of her life that shaped her. One of the painful elements of Judd's past was discovering in adulthood that the man she always believed was her biological father was not.
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Judd thought that Michael Ciminella was her father. It turns out that someone named Charles Jordan was really her biological dad. He had been a long-ago high school beau of her mother's. Sadly, Wynonna Judd was never able to forge a bond with him because he died.
Judd Spilled the Whole Story to Shawn Ryan
When Wynonna Judd did an epic, hours-long interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, she dished about the person she assumed was her father. It was quite a tale.
"Everyone kept it from me, even the town. Well, as the story goes, Michael, [her sister] Ashley's biological father, decided that he was gonna tell me. So he showed up at the Super Bowl. I was getting ready to perform at halftime at the [1994] Super Bowl, and he walked into the dressing room to tell me."
Judd added, "And my manager at the time knew what was coming, and sort of kept him from doing so. I guess he called him out in the hallway and said, 'You're not gonna do this to Wynonna right before she performs at the freaking Super Bowl.' And he didn't tell me, he decided not to. We rode the bus home, I woke up at my home the next morning, and got a phone call from a therapist that was seeing Ashley and Mom and I."
The Awkward Way She Finally Discovered the Truth
Judd shared with Shawn Ryan that it was her sister Ashley who let her in on what had formerly been secret about her paternal parentage. Ashley had suddenly dropped the huge bombshell on her sister. Besides being thunderstruck, Wynonna Judd was angry that people knew and never informed her. She was especially upset with her mother, Naomi.
"And the fact that Mom didn't do it, still to this day, challenges me to try to be better, not bitter. But I'm struggling at times with the fact that she wasn't the one that told me. Ashley knew since she was 11. The whole town knew, my manager knew, everybody knew."
