NEED TO KNOW
Friends, family and fans of Jeannie Seely will have an opportunity to give the country music icon a proper goodbye.
On Aug. 14, the “Don’t Touch Me” singer will be honored with a public memorial service at 11 a.m. at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville.
As a dedicated member of the Opry, the memorial service was named Jeannie Seely’s 5,389th Opry Show to celebrate her record for most performances.
Fans who cannot attend in person can tune in to the ceremony on WSM 650 AM and livestream through Vimeo.
In lieu of flowers, Seely’s family has asked for donations to be made to the Opry Trust Fund.
Seely died on Aug. 1 at Summit Medical Center in Hermitage, Tenn., as a result of complications from an intestinal infection, her rep confirmed in a statement to PEOPLE.
The “Sentimental Journey” singer was facing health issues for much of 2025. She’d undergone “multiple back surgeries this spring for vertebrae repairs,” as well as “two emergency abdominal surgeries,” the statement read.
At the time of her hospitalization, Seely had revealed she also had spent “11 days in the intensive care unit and [suffered] a bout with pneumonia.”
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Seely — who lost her husband Eugene Ward to cancer last December — was born in Titusville, Pa., in 1940 and raised in nearby Townville. She found success with her 1966 song “Don’t Touch Me” — and her love affair with the Grand Ole Opry began when her family would gather around the radio to listen to their shows on Saturday nights.
“Actually, I knew at 8 years old what I wanted to be,” Seely told PEOPLE in 2022 about her country singing dreams. “And I knew I wanted to be at the Opry.”
She was also inspired by the frequent singers who appeared on the program, like Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Little Jimmy Dickens and Jean Shepard.
“I just wanted to know them,” she said. “I wanted to be a part of that family that I heard every week.”
In 2024, Seely released a new song, “Suffertime,” and was working on new music. “This is crazy,” she told PEOPLE of the song. “It’s just phenomenal that I’m still able to be doing this.”
“I just feel blessed every day,” she said of her long career. “I tell everybody I’m not retired; I just quit working. They’re two different things. I only do what I enjoy. If it sounds like too much work, I just know we don’t want to do that.”
