The Idol alum and country singer has kept a low profile since her husband's 2023 death, but returned to the show to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her season

Kellie Pickler, the country singer who placed six in the fifth season of American Idol, returned to the show on Monday to perform Martina McBride’s “A Broken Wing” with Hannah Harper, a contestant on the current season. The appearance was part of a 20th anniversary reunion of the 2006 cast, and it was a rare appearance by Pickler following the loss of her husband, Kyle Jacobs, who died by suicide in 2023.

The performance was emotional, as the two sparkly dressed women, wrung raw emotion from the slowly ambling power ballad. The most special moment of the performance, though, was hearing the two singers harmonize, and the joy on Pickler’s face as she saw Harper’s promise, raising her hands to the younger singer as Harper sang a cappella.

After Idol, Pickler released her debut album, Small Town Girl, in 2006, and it was an immediate hit, eventually certified gold. The album’s singles “Red High Heels,” “I Wonder,” “Things That Can Never Cross a Man’s Mind,” and her follow-up album Kellie Pickler’s “Best Days of Your Life” all crossed over from the country charts to Billboard’s Hot 100. Her most recent album, The Woman I Am, came out in 2013 and made it up to Number 19.

In 2023, news broke that her husband, the hit country songwriter Kyle Jacobs, who co-wrote Garth Brooks’ “More Than a Memory” and starred with Pickler on the CMT reality show I Love Kellie Pickler, had died. “One of the most beautiful lessons my husband taught me was in a moment of a crisis, if you don’t know what to do, ‘do nothing, just be still,'” Pickler commented in a statement. “I have chosen to heed his advice.” She returned to the stage the following year to sing “The Woman I Am,” the title cut from her most recent album, at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for a concert paying tribute to Patsy Cline.