You just don’t see some country heartbreaks coming, and this one hit Scotty McCreery straight in the soul.
This week, the North Carolina native and Opry favorite shared the gut-wrenching news that both his grandmothers, Janet Hunter Cooke and Paquita McCreery, passed away within hours of each other. One moment, he was riding the wave of his new album and fresh radio show, and the next, he was blindsided by a double loss that no family should ever have to carry.
It was Scotty’s mom, Judy, who first opened up about the unthinkable on Facebook, pouring her heart out the way only a grieving daughter and daughter-in-law can. Janet, age 85, passed on after fighting norovirus and pneumonia. Just a few hours later, they lost Paquita too, at age 93, after declining health. One heartbreak toppled right into another, leaving the McCreerys leaning on each other and a whole lot of prayers to keep their legs under them.
Fans might remember Paquita as the tiny spitfire who joined Scotty on Celebrity Family Feud, quick with a joke and sharper than a tack even at ninety. And Grandma Janet was the backbone of so many sweet memories on the farm in Elizabeth City or breathing in that Outer Banks air with her grandkids in tow. These women weren’t just footnotes in Scotty’s story; they were the glue that held the roots together.
When Scotty took to Instagram to share the news himself, you could feel every cracked piece of his heart in those words. He called himself shocked, who wouldn’t be, but made sure to bring up the good times that will outshine this grief when the tears dry up a little. “There really are too many to count,” he wrote, remembering backyard pool days in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and family trips to Puerto Rico where Grandma Paquita showed him a different side of what family means.
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It’s a reminder, in the saddest way, that country music’s best stories have always been about family. Not just the Opry lights and platinum plaques, but the people you sit next to at the kitchen table, who hug you tight after a show, and who stay up late to pray when you’re out chasing songs. Scotty’s always carried that small-town sweetness, that humility that makes you want to root for him no matter what. This loss just proves how deeply those roots run.
“Both of them truly taught me what love is all about,” he said. It’s the kind of thing that sounds simple until you’ve felt it. Two grandmothers, two legacies, gone within the same afternoon, that’s the kind of ache that will find its way into a song one day because there’s no way it won’t.
So light a candle, spin “Five More Minutes,” and hold your people close tonight. Because in the end, even the strongest voices break when the people who taught you what love is slip away.
Keep the McCreery family in your prayers. They sure could use them.
