For years, Jenna Dailey’s family had a running joke: her mother was the “real Jolene.”
It was always treated as a funny family story—until a shocking realization turned that joke into something much more meaningful.
In a video shared on September 8, Jenna introduced her mother with a simple question: “Who is Jolene?”
Her mother, sitting calmly in a rocking chair, smiled and answered:
“It’s me. I’m Jolene.”
What happened next revealed a connection to one of Dolly Parton’s most famous songs that the family had never fully understood.
Dolly had told the story herself many times. In the 1960s, while appearing on The Porter Wagoner Show, Dolly would often meet fans and sign autographs after performances. One evening, she noticed a little girl in the crowd.
The girl was around eight years old, with striking red hair, beautiful skin, and green eyes. Dolly asked her name.
The answer was Jolene.
Dolly immediately loved the sound of it. She repeated the name to herself and realized it sounded like the title of a song. Years later, that moment became the inspiration for the song “Jolene,” released in 1973 as the title track of Dolly’s 13th studio album.
But there was another little girl who had been carrying a remarkably similar story without knowing it.
Her name is Jolenna Dailey.
Born in 1961, Jolenna had spent much of her life hearing people ask whether she had been named after Dolly Parton’s song. Her usual response was simple: she couldn’t have been named after it because she was born before the song was released.
Her name was spelled Jolenna, although it was pronounced similarly to “Jolene.”
For decades, that was where the story ended.
Then came August 25.
The day Dolly Parton died.
At Jolenna’s workplace, a colleague mentioned Dolly’s death and suddenly wondered whether Jolenna could actually be the little girl Dolly had described in interviews.
Her coworker searched for the story.
The details immediately caught Jolenna’s attention.
Dolly had said she got the name from a little girl she met at a concert.
Jolenna suddenly thought:
“Oh, wow. I could be Jolene.”
That realization sent her back into her own childhood memories.
She contacted her older brother and asked him about a famous person their family had met when they were children.
His answer was immediate.
Dolly Parton.
He remembered the year—1967—and the location: Buck Lake Ranch near Angola, Indiana.
He also remembered something else.
The children had apparently been dressed alike, and Dolly had found them adorable. According to her brother, Dolly was incredibly kind and sweet to them.
The family even had an old photograph showing the children together, dressed similarly.
Then Jolenna found an interview clip in which Dolly explained where the name “Jolene” came from.
And there was one detail that made the discovery even more astonishing: when Dolly told the story, Jolenna believed she could hear Dolly say a name resembling “Jolenna,” rather than simply “Jolene.”
Her brother watched it too.
His response?
“Yep, that was you!”
Suddenly, a decades-old family joke didn’t seem like a joke anymore.
Jolenna had been wondering about the mystery for years without realizing that she might actually have been the little girl Dolly remembered.
And she says she didn’t discover the connection until the very day Dolly died.
“Yes, I’m Jolene,” she said. “And I did not find that out until the day of Dolly’s death.”
Jolenna was only about five or six years old when the encounter happened, while Dolly was still years away from becoming the household name she would eventually become.
For Jolenna, the discovery isn’t about claiming fame. She says she simply wanted to share what she believes is a wonderfully unexpected piece of music history.
She hopes people will enjoy hearing the story from the perspective of the little girl who may have unknowingly given Dolly one of the most recognizable names in country music.
And perhaps the most touching part is what Jolenna believes the story says about Dolly herself.
To her, it shows how warmly Dolly treated ordinary people—and how something as simple as meeting a child, asking her name, and remembering that moment could eventually become part of musical history.
