Carl Dean, a businessman and husband of over 60 years to renowned country singer Dolly Parton, has died.
The 82-year-old died in his birthplace of Nashville, Tennessee, yesterday (March 3), only nine years after renewing his wedding vows to the ‘9 to 5’ singer.
The entrepreneur’s 79-year-old wife, Parton, has made the following statement: “Carl and I had many wonderful years together. Words cannot express the love we have shared for more than 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathies.
Their family has also requested ‘privacy throughout this trying time.’
Dean is survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie, and he will be put to rest in a private ceremony among his immediate family.
During a conversation with the Dumb Blonde podcast last year, the then-78-year-old singer recalled, “He said, ‘Look, now I want you to do everything you want to do, and I wish you the best, but don’t ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I won’t go,’ and he never did.”
Parton was not surprised by her wedded husband’s decision at the time, because he was never interested in being in the spotlight.
“He loves music, but he’s not the least bit interested in being in it,” she told me. “And he told me that right up front.”
Their marriage had endured the test of time, and in 2016, the couple reaffirmed their vows at their Nashville home.
Parton and Dean appear to be diametrically opposed, and not simply in terms of their attitudes about celebrity. “He’s quiet and I’m loud, and we’re funny… we have a lot of fun,” she said.
“Anytime [there is] too much tension going on, either one of us can, like, find a joke about it to really break the tension, where we don’t let it go so far,” she told me.
“We never fought back and forth.”
They met in 1964 outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat in Nashville, Tennessee. Parton was 18, and Dean was 21. Parton told The New York Times in 1976 that Sparks flew when Dean drove by in his pickup truck and ‘hollered’ at her.
Throughout Parton’s unprecedented climb to popularity, her husband supported her behind the scenes while running a road-paving business.
Decades later, they maintained their romance, with Parton revealing in 2022 that she still dresses up for her lover at home.
“Every day, I put on some makeup and fix my hair because I think, ‘Well, the whole world, I’m out here, and everybody else sees me all dressed up, and I’m not going to just kind of go home and just flop on him,'” she told the news organization E! News.