Joey + Rory's 'Hymns' album tops country, Christian music charts; Rory ending singing career after wife's death

Joey Feek with husband Rory and youngest daughter Indiana when she was still with them in the flesh. (Facebook/joeyandrory)

Country singer Joey Feek of the duo Joey + Rory continues to make waves even after her death as the duo's album "Hymns That Are Important To Us" is now at the top of Billboard's Top Christian Albums and Top Country Albums.

Joey, 40, died on Friday after a two-year battle with cervical cancer. Her funeral, whose date remains unannounced, will be a private affair, reported Taste of Country, and she will be buried in a simple wood box on the Feek family property.

Joey would have been happy to hear about their album's success. Her obituary reads that the singer "didn't want her legacy to be her disease – she wanted it to be her beloved music."

Meanwhile, Joey's husband Rory and their three children are now back at their farm in Tennessee. Rory wrote on his blog This Life I Live that as difficult as it is to go back there without Joey, it is where they needed to be.

"It's hard for me to imagine being there without Joey, but at the same time...it is where she wants us to be," he said. "It's where she will be... She's (going to) be in the mint growing beside our back deck, the sweet-corn frozen in our freezer and a million other places that her hand and heart has touched around our little farmhouse and community. Joey will still be with us. Everywhere."

Rory said he plans to give up his singing career now that his wife is gone. Their last album "Hymns That Are Important To Us" was released on Feb. 12.

"No one is more surprised that our 'Hymns' record has sold this many copies than Joey and I," said Rory. "We haven't been promoting our careers at all. The only way I can explain the sales of this record is that it's a by-product of something bigger: love."

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