March 4, 2025
There’s a great comfort in knowing that someone loves you exactly for who you are—because he fell in love with me before I became a star.
Dolly Parton in an E! News interview in May 2024, speaking about her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who passed away on Monday at the age of 82.
Why It Matters: Carl Dean is survived by his siblings and his wife, Dolly Parton. While he chose to remain out of the spotlight during Parton’s career, he was always supportive. The news was shared on Parton’s Instagram: “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”
How The Couple Met: Parton and Dean met outside a laundromat in Nashville in 1964. She was 18 and had just moved to Nashville. In an interview with The New York Times in 1976, she remembered, “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. … I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was all about.”
In a rare interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2016, Dean said of the first meeting, “My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl.’ My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’ And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”
Parton and Dean were married in Georgia in 1966. In 2016, the couple renewed their wedding vows for their 50th anniversary.
Read More: Dolly Parton’s Ultra-Private Husband of Nearly 60 Years, Carl Thomas Dean, Dies at 82 (People)
Image Credit: Dolly Parton
by Kelly Dean, Based in Kentucky.
