Joey Feek, of Country Duo Joey + Rory, Dead at 40
Mar-07-2016

Joey Martin Feek, of the award-winning husband-and-wife singing duo Joey + Rory, has died. She was 40 years old. In a blog post on February 29th, Feek's husband, singer-songwriter Rory Lee Feek, who had been chronicling his wife's final months in a stark, vulnerable online diary, wrote that she has "been asleep for days now, and her body is shutting down quickly." Today, he posted that she had died: "At 2:30 this afternoon, as we were gathered around her, holding hands and praying. . .my precious bride breathed her last."

Feek was first diagnosed with cervical cancer in June 2014, just four months after the birth of their daughter, Indiana Boone, who was diagnosed with Down syndrome shortly after she was born. Feek had undergone surgery earlier in 2015 and was being treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

Originally from Alexandria, Indiana, Joey Martin was born the third of five children in a musical family. Parents Jack and June Martin were childhood sweethearts who married after Jack Martin returned from serving in Vietnam. The young singer made her stage debut at 6 years old, performing Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors." In later years, she often performed with her mother.

In 1994, Joey's only brother died several days after being involved in a car accident near the family's Indiana farmhouse. He was 17. In 2000, two years after moving to Nashville, Joey Martin was signed to Sony Music as a recording artist, but her two LPs for the label were shelved before being released. The second album, Strong Enough to Cry, was eventually issued in 2007, five years into her marriage to songwriter Rory Lee Feek, whom she first spotted at the Bluebird Caf� in Nashville.

Rory Lee Feek, a Kansas native who served in the Marines before moving to Nashville in 1995, was a staff writer for Hall of Fame songwriter Harlan Howard, then with Clint Black, before forming the Giantslayer publishing company and record label in 2004. He scored a Number One hit that year with Blake Shelton's "Some Beach," after having also penned hits for Collin Raye, Clay Walker and Tracy Byrd, among several others.

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