Naomi Judd Naomi Judd was born Diana Judd in 1946, in Ashland, Kentucky. One of four children, she enjoyed happy times as a young girl. But that changed in 1963, when Judd, then 17, got pregnant and dropped out of high school. She was also helping her parents care for her brother Brian, who had just been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Daughter Wynnona was born in May 1964. Judd relished her new role as a mother, but her happiness soon turned to mourning the next year, when her brother passed away. Soon afterward, the young mother married a former boyfriend and moved to Los Angeles with him. In 1968, she gave birth to her second daughter, Ashley (the future movie star), but Judd's marriage soon soured. After the divorce, the single mom went on welfare to make ends meet and then took her two daughters back to Kentucky, where she enrolled in nursing school and decided to take on a new name: Naomi. Judd often relaxed in those stressful times by singing with Wynnona. By 1979, singing ha