Reba McEntire has revealed that Dolly Parton called her in the final days of July, about a month before Parton's death on Aug. 25, but McEntire missed the call.

"She did call me the last of July, and I was in a meeting and I missed her call," McEntire said, according to TMZ. When she tried to call back, she said the two were never able to connect.

McEntire said a friend later phoned to tell her "Dolly's gone," leaving her without an explanation for the missed call. "I'll never know why she called me," McEntire said, reflecting on decades of friendship with Parton in Nashville's country music circles.

Parton died at 80 following what her publicist described as a brief battle with cancer. Tributes from across the music industry followed her death, and McEntire's account, first reported this week, adds a personal, bittersweet coda to the loss for fans still processing Parton's absence from the genre she helped define for more than half a century.