Dolly Parton was married to Carl Dean for nearly six decades, but she once took another man to Europe as her date. Parton and her friend, Bob Hunka, went abroad together and had what Parton described as a romantic trip. Despite this, she admitted Hunka was embarrassed by her at one point during their trip.
Parton met Hunka through Emmylou Harris, and the pair clicked despite their outward differences.
“Bob is a world-class chef, a connoisseur and collector of fine wines and fine art,” Parton wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “He loves the theater, good books, candlelight dinners, and brilliant conversation. You would think the two of us would be like oil and water and that those two things don’t mix. Well, somehow, we made the damnedest batch of watered-down oil you ever saw. We just took to each other.”
Parton and Hunka both had partners, but they liked to travel together. Before Hunka got married, she wanted to take one last trip with him. They wanted to see Paris and London.
“Well, there were Carl and Bob’s fiancée, waving good-bye as Bob and I took off on an incredibly romantic adventure,” Parton wrote. “Carl would never do anything like that with me. He’s not into candlelit dinners and fine wine. He’s not about to eat anything he can’t see, and he doesn’t drink at all. He wouldn’t deprive me of it, though.”
On one night of the trip, Parton and Hunka went to the opera. She admitted that she felt she stuck out amongst the crowd.
“One night we went to the grand opera,” she wrote. “I mean to tell you, it was grand. The opera house, those highfalutin’ people in all of their finery; it was almost overwhelming to me.”
Parton likes tight, rhinestoned clothing, which she said did not fit in with the rest of the crowd. She felt that Hunka must have been embarrassed by her, but appreciated that he didn’t say anything.
“I know Bob must have been a little embarrassed to take me there in my gaudy, tasteless outfit, but if he was, he didn’t say anything,” she wrote. “It was grand opera meets the Grand Ole Opry.”
Parton and Hunka got dinner beforehand, where she said she had a “snootful” of good red wine. The moment the performance started, she started to laugh.
“For some reason, it struck me funny. I started in snickering. Just a little at first, but enough to be heard by the people around us. It was like being in school and having something strike you funny. No matter what you do, there’s no way you can stop.”
Parton said she eventually had to leave, laughing all the way out.
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