Dolly Parton announced the tragic news on Monday that her longtime husband Carl Thomas Dean had died at the age of 82.
In a statement posted to Instagram, the legendary country songstress — who never had any children with her late husband — revealed that he had died earlier on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee.
Dolly wrote that she and Carl had ‘spent many wonderful years together,’ and the two had been happily married for nearly 60 years.
However, their union has been a complete mystery even to many of the 79-year-old singer’s biggest fans, who have long been puzzled about why the two never expanded their family.
Although Dolly has been known for years for her bubbly personality and forays beyond music into acting, her husband tended to operate behind the scenes, leaving her to be the public face for the couple.
Now, DailyMail.com takes a look inside Dolly and Carl’s intensely private marriage.
DailyMail.com takes a look inside Dolly Parton’s intensely private marriage to her late husband Carl Thomas Dean after his death at 82
Dolly revealed in a statement on Monday that her husband Carl, whom she had been married to for nearly 60 years, had died earlier in the day in Nashville
Dolly and Carl’s meet-cute in Nashville
The 9 To 5 singer first met her future husband in a place most wouldn’t peg as a hotbed of romance — the laundromat.
But both Dolly and Carl described the fateful meeting in 1964 as love at first sight in later interviews.
‘I’d come to Nashville with dirty clothes,’ she told the New York Times. ‘I was in such a hurry to get here — and after I’d put my clothes in the machine, I started walkin’ down the street, just lookin’ at my new home, and this guy hollered at me, and I waved. Bein’ from the country, I spoke to everybody.’
Dolly said she had a feeling that the mystery man approaching her would become a major figure in her life.
‘He came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband,’ she declared.
When the couple renewed their wedding vows for their 50th anniversary in 2016, Carl made it clear that he was just as entranced by Dolly when they met.
‘My first thought was I’m gonna marry that girl,’ he told Entertainment Tonight. ‘My second thought was, “Lord she’s good lookin.'” And that was the day my life began.’
Dolly and Carl began dating the same year, but it was difficult to find time together, as she was living with her aunt and uncle and didn’t want to bring him in the house while she was baby sitting her young cousin.
One day when she wasn’t on babysitting duty, she went over to Carl’s house to spend time with him
‘That was my first chance to go anywhere with Carl, and he drove me straight to his folks’ house and introduced me to his mother and daddy,’ she told the New York Times in 1976. ”Cause he said he knew right the minute he saw me that that’s the one he wanted.’
Dolly and Carl both described a laundromat meet-cute in 1964 that was love at first sight. They began dating that year, and he proposed in 1966
The happy couple were married later that year in a private ceremony at a Baptist church with just the pastor, his wife and Dolly’s mother attending. She opted for a small ceremony after her manager warned her that marriage could harm her career
Carl and Dolly get married
Around two years after they started dating, Carl proposed to Dolly.
Although she was over the moon, the songstress later recalled that her manager at the time thought being engaged, and then married, could harm her career at that early stage.
Although she decided against a large wedding because of his warning, she and Carl were still determined to get married, so they opted to tie the knot with just the pastor of Ringgold Baptist Church in Ringgold, Georgia, officiating.
The only witnesses to the low-key ceremony on May 30, 1966, were the pastor’s wife and Dolly’s mother, Avie Lee Owens, she told Local 3 News in Tennessee in 2012.
‘I had bought a little dress, momma had bought me a Bible, some flowers on it. We grabbed momma and went back, and got married on a Monday, in a church,’ she recounted.
The nuptials were so small scale that Dolly and Carl didn’t even have time to celebrate, as she said they both had to go back to work the following day.
‘We took momma back to the bus station in Chattanooga so she could ride on back to Knoxville,’ she shared. ‘So she wouldn’t be on our so-called honeymoon, which was a few hours and we both had to go back to work the next morning.’
Dolly had one of her biggest successes in 1973 with her song Jolene, inspired by a bank teller’s flirtations with Carl. But several years into her career the couple hadn’t welcomed any children
Dolly releases her most famous song after foregoing children
Dolly was already a star of country music in 1973, but she elevated her profile considerably with the release of her hit single Jolene.
The song, which Beyoncé recently performed with rewritten lyrics on her Cowboy Carter album, was inspired by a bank teller that Parton came to think was flirting a bit too heavily with her husband.
‘She got this terrible crush on my husband,’ the singer told NPR in 2008. ‘And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention.
‘It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, “Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money,”‘ she joked. ‘So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.’
Despite the somber, pleading tone of the classic song, Dolly later claimed to the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in 2014 that she ‘put a stop to’ the woman’s flirtations with her husband.
Despite achieving more success than she ever imagined, Dolly and Carl had had no children seven years into their marriage — and they never would.
While speaking to Saga Magazine in 2023, the performer shed some light on why she and Carl kept their family as a duo.
‘When you’re a young couple, you think you’re going to have kids, but it just wasn’t one of those burning things for me,’ she explained. ‘I had my career and my music and I was traveling. If I’d had kids, I’d have stayed at home with them. I’m sure and worried myself to death about them.’
Later, she felt vindicated by her decision, as she would ‘hate to be bringing a child into this world right now’ due to ‘everything that’s going on.’
However, in 2014 she told Billboard that she and Carl weren’t opposed to having children, and admitted they even had names picked out if they ended up having any.
The same year, she told People: ‘I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine.’
Back in 1977, she also told the publication that for her cover story that she wouldn’t want to have children if it meant ‘leav[ing] them for somebody else to raise while I have a career.’
Carl had such a minimal presence throughout Dolly’s career that it was news when he opted to join her in public, such as for his surprise birthday party in 1979 and to join her in LA for two months while she filmed 9 To 5
But Dolly admitted in her 1994 autobiography that she had an ‘affair of the hear’ with her bandleader Gregg Perry in the early ’80s, before he quit her band while work on the soundtrack for 1982’s The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas; seen in 2014
Dolly’s behind-the-scenes love joins her as her career skyrockets — but affair rumors swirl
Carl had such a minimal presence throughout Dolly’s career that it was news when he opted to join her in public.
In 1979, Cosmopolitan reported that Dolly’s bandleader Gregg Perry had thrown a double surprise party, with one of the guests of honor being Carl.
Perry mused that Dolly’s husband ‘never goes with us, but this week he’s made a real exception’ since it was his birthday.
A year later, Carl made his presence felt again when he joined his love on a two-month trip to Los Angeles while she filmed her hit workplace comedy 9 To 5, which she starred in with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Dolly’s husband made more of a public show of his affection around that period just as his wife was hit by rumors of an affair, which she denied.
In her first book, the 1994 autobiography My Life And Other Unfinished Business, the I Will Always Love You singer admitted to having an ‘affair of the heart’ with Perry, though she stressed that it never became physical.
‘Gregg and I became very close … I had never spent so much time with such a well-educated and knowledgeable man,’ she wrote, via People. ‘I let myself get completely wrapped up in him.’
Touring brought the two together, but things went south by 1982 when they were collaborating on the soundtrack for her 1982 film The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.
