Linda Ronstadt Now Shares Home with Adopted Daughter Who Is Her 'Source of Joy' as She Fights Disease

• Legendary rock musician Linda Ronstadt now lives quietly in her San Fransisco home.
• She shares the home with her adopted daughter, who moved in to support her as she is not in good health.
• Ronstadt suffers from a disease that has taken her singing voice and fine motor skills, but her spirit remains unbroken.

Linda Ronstadt, a well-known figure in the rock music scene, has made significant contributions to the music industry. Her clear and powerful voice brought life to memorable songs like "You're No Good" and "Blue Bayou." She made a name for herself on Broadway and popularized mariachi music.

Her talent and charm even caught the attention of notable figures like President Obama and Kermit the Frog. Ronstadt was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, where she lived on the remaining part of a large cattle ranch. Growing up in the unique environment of the Sonoran desert had a lasting impact on her.

She says, "There's a specific area of the Sonoran desert where I grew up that has a border fence in it, but I didn't particularly notice the division."

In adulthood, she still visits Mexico, especially the hilly town where her grandfather was born, which always energizes her. She finds the community there, with its horse-riding residents, almost magical.

Coming from a musically inclined family, Ronstadt developed a love for singing and a taste for the simple, wholesome food from her family's kitchen. She is particularly fond of the simple meals of ranchers and farmers, like beans and tortillas.

Despite her lineage, with one grandfather being the inventor of the electric stove and the other a maestro of meat and mesquite, Ronstadt confesses to a void in her repertoire when it comes to cooking.

Ronstadt achieved great success in the '70s and became the most successful female singer of the decade, but she remains humble. She openly admits that the initial albums of the Los Angeles folk-rock trio, the Stone Poneys, were not up to par and believes her singing skills didn't fully develop until the 1980s.

When an interviewer mentioned her love for their late '60s music, she exclaimed, "Oh, God! We were terrible." Interestingly, a Mexican song inspired her to join a family sing-a-long while filming the documentary "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice." Later, she modestly dismissed it as "not singing," saying she was just "grunting" along with the singer.

Stardom came with a lifestyle that Ronstadt found difficult. The constant travel and the loneliness of life on the road made maintaining relationships challenging.

Although she never married, she embraced motherhood wholeheartedly. She adopted two infants, Mary Clementine, and Carlos, and intentionally kept them out of the public eye as they grew up.

Today, her children are her "constant source of joy." Mary, a visual artist, has her paintings displayed in her mother's San Fransisco home. Carlos, who lives just a mile away, works in IT.

The rock music icon now lives with a silent piano due to Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a disease that gradually took away her singing voice and fine motor skills. She can't play the piano, she revealed, "My fingers won't do anything like that."

Nevertheless, her piano still echoes with music played by others. While her singing voice has been silenced, Ronstadt has found other ways to express herself.

She reflects on end-of-life issues, acknowledging the uncertainty of life and death, but focuses on more immediate concerns of everyday life.

In late August 2022, Vogue visited Ronstadt at her San Francisco home where she lives with her daughter to discuss Ronstadt's book, which was scheduled for publication on October 4, 2022. She was found in her living room, inspecting the keys of her black grand piano.

Even with her physical limitations, Ronstadt managed to publish a book, "Feels Like Home." She had the help of her co-writer Lawrence Downes, who would channel her voice based on numerous conversations and testing the recipes. "Feels Like Home" includes an array of recipes.

No matter her self-confessed lack of culinary skills, which makes her authorship of a cookbook all the more intriguing, Ronstadt's book focuses, in part, on recipes. Her recipes range from the Ronstadt family's meatballs to the perfect tortilla.

She is particularly discerning about tortillas, stating, "You have to start when you were a kid and learn how to [make them]. I try to make 'em, and they just look like amoebas!"

Ronstadt's story has been told through music, and now she seeks to express it through food as much as possible. However, she never really learned how to cook.

She had planned to learn cooking as a project for her retirement, but life had other plans. "I didn't know I was going to get this disease," she confessed.

In a different interview, Ronstadt's speech and movements subtly revealed the impact of the degenerative illness that forced her to retire from performing in 2009.

Even now, the spirited determination that catapulted her to the pinnacle of the predominantly male music industry in the 1970s remains unmistakable. She spoke with a breathless energy, laughing, analyzing, and reminiscing.

The first symptoms of the disease that would end her career appeared in 2000. Her throat would tense up while singing, and she rapidly lost strength. Misdiagnosed initially with Parkinson's disease, it took years before doctors correctly identified her condition as PSP, a rare disorder that attacks the part of the brain governing physical movement.

The diagnosis meant a significant lifestyle change for Ronstadt. The activities she had envisioned for this stage of her life — gardening, knitting, traveling for pleasure — were no longer possible. However, she finds solace in writing, which offers her a chance to revisit the places of her past and the beloved people who live on in her memory.

When Ronstadt announced her plans to write a cookbook, her children, especially Mary, who moved in to assist as her mother's disease progressed, found the idea amusing, given Ronstadt's lack of culinary skills. Ronstadt's love for food goes beyond her own kitchen.

She has a birthday tradition of visiting the Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco for a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream but without nuts. She also enjoys hosting Sunday brunch at her Dutch colonial house near the Presidio. Ronstadt may not be the cook, but she has always emphasized the importance of family meals at a properly set table.

She made sure her children, whom she adopted as newborns in her 40s, started their day at a table set with cloth napkins. This ritual underscores the value Linda Ronstadt places on family time and shared meals, painting a picture of a home filled with love, laughter, and the aroma of good food.

At 68, Ronstadt was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest arts honor in the US. Presented by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony, she was honored for her "one-of-a-kind voice and her decades of remarkable music." Despite needing assistance to reach the stage, she walked to receive her award.