How Engaged Couple Liz Hurley and Billy Ray Cyrus Found Happiness

Rejoice: showbusiness’s most unexpected couple, Billy Ray Cyrus and Elizabeth Hurley, have reportedly made their relationship official.

Hurley, 61, the plummy-voiced actress, model, farmer and swimwear entrepreneur, has been proudly displaying a spectacular diamond ring — along with an even wider smile than usual.

Her Tennessee-based partner, country music star Billy Ray Cyrus — father of singer Miley Cyrus and owner of a famously thick head of dark, dyed hair — has been less forthcoming. Asked this week whether he was engaged, the 65-year-old singer drawled: “I got me a new guitar.”

Friends, however, have confirmed that the couple are indeed betrothed. Cyrus, who has been married three times previously, apparently decided a few days ago that the fourth time might be the charm. The news has reportedly delighted everyone around them.

“Elizabeth is giddy with joy,” says a friend. “They both are.”

The death of Cyrus’s close friend Dolly Parton in August, aged 80, is said to have affected him deeply and helped persuade him to take the next step with Hurley.

The friend said: “Apparently Dolly’s death really brought it home to him that nobody knows how long they have and that you need to grab happiness with both hands, to seize the day.”

Could this, then, finally be Elizabeth Hurley’s happy ever after?

After all, Hurley’s turbulent romantic history could easily provide the material for a country song.

She spent 13 years in a relationship with her “best friend”, Hugh Grant. The pair never married, and Grant’s highly publicised 1995 encounter with prostitute Divine Brown proved humiliating. They eventually separated in 2000.

Grant, who has said he was commitment-phobic and did not believe in marriage, is now married and has five children with two women.

Hurley later had a son, Damian, now 24, with multi-millionaire film producer Steve Bing. He left her after she announced the pregnancy, questioned whether he was the father and requested a DNA test. The results later confirmed his paternity. Bing died by suicide in 2020.

In 2007, Hurley married businessman Arun Nayar. Despite their lavish wedding celebrations, the marriage lasted just 45 months.

She became engaged to cricketer Shane Warne in 2011, but the relationship ended two years later amid reports that he had been exchanging sexual messages with other women. Warne died from a heart attack four and a half years ago. Hurley and Cyrus first met in 2022 while filming the cheesy Christmas movie Christmas In Paradise. Their characters were not romantically involved, but the pair reportedly felt a spark on set.

They began dating early last year, after Cyrus had left his third marriage.

His first marriage was to Cindy Smith, with whom he co-wrote some of his early songs. That was followed by a 30-year union with Tish, Miley’s mother, and then a brief marriage to Australian singer Firerose. Cyrus filed for divorce in 2024, only a few months after their wedding.

The obvious question facing the newly engaged couple is how a marriage between Herefordshire’s glamorous 187-acre landowner and a transatlantic country music star will work in practice.

Since their relationship began, they have divided their time between Hurley’s home, which includes 187 acres at Donnington Hall, and Cyrus’s ranch outside Nashville, Tennessee.

They don’t live together and it’s not clear if they actually ever will, even after they tie the knot.

In an interview with People magazine this summer, Hurley said: ‘We split our time between Billy’s farm in Tennessee and my country house in England, with brief forays into Nashville and London.

‘We both love the countryside, where I’m usually wielding power tools in the garden whilst Billy strums his guitar under a tree.

‘We obsessively watch birds of prey and light lots of bonfires. It’s bliss.’

As for where the wedding might take place, again it’s not clear. I’m told Elizabeth wants a ‘really big event’, preferably here in the UK, with all her friends, multiple changes of dress, bestie Sir Elton John singing and – who knows? – maybe even Hello! magazine in attendance, as it was for her exhausting bi-continental wedding to Arun Nayar.

That event included a white wedding in church followed by a huge party with the bride in Versace at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire and then, four days later, a multi-day party at the Umaid Bhawan Palace and Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India.

Billy Ray apparently has something much smaller in mind.

‘He’d be happy just to run off the two of them and do it quietly,’ says the friend. ‘He wants a quiet little affair and she wants the full nine yards.’

The Hurley vision would take at least a year to organise but her fiance’s iteration could happen far sooner. Only time will tell which one wins out.

For now, the happy couple are simply celebrating their love story.

I’m told: ‘He can’t believe his luck to have landed her. She thinks he is “so sweet” and she loves the comment and the attention which their love story has provoked.

‘It has made her kind of fascinating again and she does love a bit of that.

‘I saw them at the Olivier Awards together [in April] and the vibe between them is a bit Joan Collins and Percy [Gibson, Dame Joan’s fifth husband.]

‘She is dominant and she pays for everything and he kind of trails handsomely in her wake.’

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Their relationship was announced at Easter last year, with a picture of the couple in each other’s arms, Cyrus wearing a fetching Alice band complete with seasonal bunny ears. Her son Damian, a model, was the first to ‘like’ it; Cyrus’s six children stayed silent, however.

Billy Ray shares daughters Miley, 33, and Noah, 26, and son Braison, 32, with second wife Tish. He also adopted Tish’s daughter Brandi, 39, and son Trace, 37, from a previous marriage. In the same year that Miley was born, Cyrus also became the father to a son, Christopher Cody Cyrus, born to waitress Kristin Luckey.

A week after their big reveal, Liz shared pictures from Tennessee and both have been the opposite of shy on social media ever since.

By June 2025 – after a bare four months of dating – Cyrus posted a photo of Hurley sitting in his lap captioned: ‘Happy birthday to the love of my life.’

At the time the romance started, sources in America reported that Tish ‘had her thoughts and suspicions’ that her estranged husband had been getting entangled with Liz when they made that Christmas film together in 2022.

Tish and Billy Ray officially divorced in April the same year, but in court papers Tish said they had not lived together since 2020, so by the time he and Liz were making Christmas In Paradise they were separated. She has also spoken of ‘disrespect’ on both sides in the marriage. They had previously filed for divorce – but reconciled – in 2011 and 2013.

They announced they were finally divorcing with a joint statement saying: ‘After 30 years, five wonderful children and a lifetime of memories, we have decided to go our separate ways, not with sadness, but with love in our hearts. We grew up together, we formed a family that we can be very proud of and now it’s time to create our own paths.’

Whether or not there were sparks on set with Liz, in May 2022 Billy Ray started dating singer Firerose, real name Johanna Rose Hodges, 37, whom he had first met in 2007 on the set of Hannah Montana, the Disney show that made his daughter Miley a star.

They were married in October 2023 before splitting in May 2024. It was a bitter and public break-up, with each accusing the other of verbal and emotional abuse. Both deny all allegations.

Billy Ray did not appear to be in a good place at this point.

He was estranged from his children and adopted son Trace – a recovering alcoholic – said he had been concerningly absent from all their lives.

His chaotic performance at Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, which had numerous technical issues, then caused Trace to post a message on Instagram asking his dad to get help.

He wrote: ‘Sadly the man that I wanted so desperately to be just like I barely recognise now. It seems this world has beaten you down and it’s become obvious to everyone but you.’

He went on: ‘You’re not healthy Dad & everyone is noticing it. As I write this with tears in my eyes I hope you realise this message only comes from a place of love and also fear that the world may lose you far too soon.

‘I don’t know what you’re struggling with exactly but I think I have a pretty good idea & I’d love to help you if you would open up and receive the help.’

Billy Ray has previously spoken about consuming an ‘excess of alcohol’ and using cocaine in the early years of his career, and last year Miley said she remembered her father smoking marijuana on the set of Hannah Montana.

However, a Cyrus family source said that, contrary to Trace’s post, the singer was ‘completely sober’ during the performance, adding: ‘Billy Ray is healthy and happy and doesn’t do any substances. The man doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do drugs.’

Soon afterwards, Billy Ray appealed for ‘the start of healing’ for his family in a video on YouTube: ‘Let this moment be the start of healing for us all. The past does not equal the future.’

It was at this low point that Liz came back into his life. Cyrus says that she texted him out of the blue in February 2025.

After a bit of back and forth he invited her to Nashville to see for herself the city’s renaissance – it has become a major creative hub for film and TV productions alongside its status as a premier destination for music.

In Billy Ray, she found a very masculine man – like incorrigible charmer Shane Warne with whom she initially shared an unstoppable chemistry.

The late Australian cricketer was smartened up and slimmed down by Liz, and they even set a wedding date before calling it quits in 2013.

Her friends were even more agog about Cyrus, whom Liz calls ‘squirrel man’ and cuts a very unlikely figure with her at events such as ballet fundraisers and fashion shows.

A friend says: ‘He has an amazing drawl which makes everything he says sound really profound. He loves talking about himself. That’s his favourite topic. He’s very spiritual. She loves it all.’

His first trip to the UK with Hurley was the first time he had left Tennessee in five years. At home, he plays her classic country music by Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash and they snuggle up to watch the epic Western TV series Yellowstone.

Billy Ray has reflected: ‘There was something in the opposites of us, I think, that maybe not only got other people’s attention but even our own.

‘And I’ve never seen anybody that, in some ways, has more in common with the insanity that I have lived through in this crazy showbusiness. Then mix in other personal, good things and tragedies – she’s like me.’

Their respective families seem only happy for them. A friend says: ‘Even though Damian has moved out to his own place, he is with his mum constantly and Billy Ray doesn’t seem to mind.

‘He is literally sitting between them half the time.’

Liz commented: ‘I love that Billy and my son Damian get on so well and spend a lot of time together. In the past year I’ve really enjoyed starting to get to know some of his kids, too.’

Earlier this month, Liz said: ‘Funnily enough, Billy’s farm in Tennessee is very similar to my farm here, so in a way it kind of feels normal.’

She added: ‘There are a lot more similarities than you’d think. We have the same hair. Identical hair. Apart from his beard, we’re actually like twins.’

One can only hope they have similar expectations from their forthcoming marriage.