Diana Ellen Judd was born on January 11, 1946, in Ashland, Ky. Her father operated a gas station and her mother was a waitress.
Judd, who later took the name Naomi after a favorite biblical figure, grew up in a family of trauma, including murder and suicide. She later revealed that she had been sexually abused by a great-uncle and later by classmates.
“I’ve been alone since I was 17,” Judd told the Palm Beach Post in 2006. “When I was pregnant with Wynonna, when I was 17 in my senior year of high school, no one knew I was pregnant, my little brother was dying [from Hodgkin’s disease], my parents were about to divorce. The guy who got me pregnant left town when he found out I was pregnant.