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Dolly Parton and her husband were very different. Still, she said they worked better together than they would have with other people.
Dolly Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, were married from 1966 until his death in 2025. The couple met on her first day in Nashville and fell for each other straight away. Parton said their relationship worked well even though they were very different. She didn’t think many other women would be able to handle being married to him.
Dolly Parton said her relationship with her husband worked well
Parton said Dean was one of the best people she knew. She loved the stability he brought to her busy life.
“Carl was the person who gave my life meaning and a foundation,” she told Playgirl in 1981, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “Somebody to make plans with, to give us both a reason to work, somebody to build a home with and talk with about bein’ old together and where we’re goin’. Somebody not to bug me, not to choke me; and for me not to choke him, because he needs his freedom as much as I need mine.”
Parton believes he added a great deal to her life. She also thought she enhanced his. She wasn’t sure he would have been a good partner for another woman because of this.
“Another kind of woman would have choked him to death, and he would not have become the person that he is from lovin’ me,” she said. “And it’s the same as far as I’m concerned. Nobody could have brought out of me all the good things that he has and still have been willing or strong enough to tolerate the weaknesses.”
This was the secret to their marriage of over 60 years.
Parton and Dean had a number of conversations before their first official date. He took her to his parents’ home on their first date and introduced Parton in a way that shocked her.
“Inside, his mother was just putting supper on the table. Without any other word of introduction Carl said to his mother, ‘Fix this girl a plate. She’s the one I’m going to marry,’” Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “With a nervous laugh I tried to acknowledge that he had made a little joke. But something in his voice told me he hadn’t.”
Dean once said he knew he wanted to marry Parton from the moment he laid eyes on her.
“My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl,’” Dean said, per Entertainment Tonight. “My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’ And that was the day my life began.”
She has spoken about life since his death
Dean died in March 2025. Parton said it has been difficult to move forward without him.
“I just try to go on, because I know I have to,” she told the Associated Press. “And he was ill for quite a while, and part of me was at peace that he was at peace and not suffering anymore. But that still doesn’t make up for the loss and the loneliness of it.”
She said she has leaned on her faith in order to deal with her grief.
“I am a person of faith, and I truly believe that I’m going to see him again someday. And I see him every day in my memories and in my heart, and in all the things that we used to do and all the things that we’ve built together,” she said. “You just kind of have to learn to kind of make new plans — but that’s the hardest part.”
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