Loretta Lynn, queen of country music, discovered during her first televised act in Washington

Loretta Lynn, the queen of country music and a coal miner’s daughter, has died at the age of 90.

In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

The famed singer once lived in Washington state, where her country music talent was truly discovered in her first televised performance in Tacoma.

The music legend, who recorded 16 number one singles, won three Grammys, is in two music halls of fame and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, moved to the Whatcom County town of Custer from Kentucky when she was only 14 years old. She was pregnant and married to her 21-year-old husband, Oliver Vanetta “Mooney” Lynn Jr.

They would have four kids in Custer. Lynn was photographed in the late ‘50s as the Northwest Washington Fair blue-ribbon produce canning champion.

After her husband bought her a guitar at Sears when she was 18, Lynn sang and played at the local grange and some clubs.

She was invited to sing on a country music show called the Bar-K Jamboree on KTNT TV, later known as KSTW, in Tacoma in 1959.

A wealth lumber baron from Vancouver happened to see that show and was so impressed that he offered to finance her first recording, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” which went on to be her first hit single.

In the 1980 film “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Sissy Spacek played Lynn and won an Oscar. In the popular imagination, that forged the story of Lynn in Hollywood; Butcher Hollow, Kentucky; and in Nashville, Tennessee.

However, none of that would have occurred if she had not been seen by the right people at the right time, right in western Washington.

By the way, Lynn made it a point of playing many concerts at the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden, where she won ribbons for canning fruits and vegetables that she grew in jars.