The Emmys stopped for Dolly Parton on Monday night. Sally Field walked out first, remembering her Steel Magnolias co-star before Reba McEntire closed the segment with a full orchestral rendering of Parton's 1983 song "Appalachian Memories."

Field had reason to be on that stage twice over. She'd won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie earlier in the night for Netflix's Remarkably Bright Creatures. Then she came back out to talk about a friend.

"She was genuine and humble, supportive and blisteringly funny with a bawdy sense of humor that would send any rude guy looking for a place to hide," Field said, according to Variety and Just Jared. She went further, calling Parton "a real giant," not just as a performer but as someone whose giving reshaped lives across Tennessee and beyond. She ended on this: "God bless you, Dolly Parton, my friend. I am not the only person on Earth that will love you forever and ever."

Then came McEntire, in a sparkling white gown, singing a song Parton herself had performed at the Emmys back in 1983. Producers ran the original clip first. In it, Parton talks about growing up in the Smokies and how deep the song runs for her, then half-jokes that she'd rather not hear about it if the audience doesn't like it. They liked it. McEntire's version played against decades of photographs and footage from Parton's career, and she was visibly shaken by the end, telling her old friend, "I love you, Dolly, very much."

The two went back nearly fifty years, to a Grand Ole Opry night in 1977 when Parton showed up unannounced and bumped one of McEntire's scheduled songs off the set list, per Country Living. McEntire has said meeting her hero mattered more than the extra minute on stage. They stayed close through the decades and cut a new version of McEntire's "Does He Love You" together in 2021.

Parton died in Nashville on August 25 at 80, following what her family has described as a brief fight with cancer. Her sister Stella told CBS Mornings that Parton kept the diagnosis from almost everyone, family included, because she couldn't bear the thought of people worrying on her account. Days before she died, Parton appeared in a promotional video for a new Dollywood roller coaster after skipping an in-person event over dizziness and dehydration. A Las Vegas residency had already been shelved the year before over what was called health challenges.

Television was never Parton's main stage but she wasn't a stranger to it either. Five Emmy nominations, one win, for producing Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square in 2021. Her company, Sandollar Productions, had a hand in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. None of that touches the music, the eleven Grammys, or the Imagination Library, which had shipped more than 300 million free books to children by last year's count and keeps running.