Bobby Brown speaks about his lost Bobbi Kristina

In his first TV interview since his daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown died after months in a coma, R&B singer Bobby Brown said he never gave up hope she would survive, but yielded to God's will.

And maybe her late mother Whitney Houston wanted her with her, Brown joked.

Brown and his wife, Alicia Etheredge Brown, appeared on the second-season opener of The Real, a syndicated daytime talk show from Warner Bros. Television aimed at women age 18-24. The conversation with the five young women hosts will air Monday (check local listings).

"We prayed and hoped for six months, you know, for something better to happen," Brown said. "But when God calls you, he calls you."

Brown quipped that he was "pretty sure her mother was…had a part with like (in exaggerated voice), come on, let’s get her up here.”

"In the best way," Alicia Brown added. "In the welcoming way."

"The best way possible," Brown said.

Houston, who died three years ago after suffering a heart attack and drowning in a bathtub in a Beverly Hills hotel, is buried in New Jersey, where Bobbi Kristina, 22, was buried next to her last month.

"(Whitney) just, you know, she just, you know, she was not comfortable by herself, I guess," Bobby Brown said. "You know, she just called my daughter with her."

Why The Real? Brown is friendly with a producer on the show and knows some of the hosts, said Leshelle Sargent, publicity director at Warner Bros. Television.

Bobbi Kristina buried next to mother Whitney in N.J.

Bobbi Kristina died July 26 in a Georgia hospice, almost six months after she fell into unconsciousness in a bathtub in a still-mysterious incident at her Georgia townhouse on Jan. 31.

Bobby Brown was mostly silent during the time his daughter was comatose in hospitals and the hospice, although at one point, during a concert, he told the audience he thought she was "awake and watching me."

Is Bobbi Kristina Brown out of coma?

What happened to Bobbi Kristina and why is still being investigated by authorities in Fulton County, Ga., and a final autopsy report is still pending.

Her court-appointed conservator has filed a lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend, Nick Gordon, accusing him of beating her up, stealing her money and giving her a "toxic cocktail" on the day she was found in the bathtub. He has denied the accusations, calling them "slanderous and meritless."

Six glaring questions in Bobbi Kristina case