Dolly Parton siempre amará a Carl Dean.
De hecho, la leyenda de la música country elogió su matrimonio que duró décadas en los meses previos a que Carl muriera el 3 de marzo a los 83 años.
“Es importante tener a alguien de tu lado y saber que te amará tal como eres”, dijo Dolly a los copresentadores de E! News Keltie Knight y Justin Sylvester durante una entrevista exclusiva en mayo. “Es muy reconfortante saber que alguien te ama exactamente por lo que eres, porque se enamoró de mí antes de que me convirtiera en una estrella”.
Aunque Carl siempre había preferido permanecer fuera del foco de atención, él era su mayor animador.
“Para él, yo soy su estrella”, bromeó el actor de 79 años en ese momento, y agregó que su dinámica única “ha funcionado para nosotros porque ambos hacemos cosas diferentes y es emocionante cuando estamos juntos”.
“Simplemente disfrutamos el uno del otro”, continuó. “Una de las cosas que nos gusta hacer (no necesariamente una cita nocturna, tenemos muchas citas), es tener nuestra pequeña casa rodante y nos gusta viajar. Bajamos a comprar algo de comer o hacemos un picnic y bajamos al río”.
Y cada vez que estaba de gira sola, la cantante de “Jolene” siempre tenía a su hombre en mente.
“Carl y yo nunca nos hemos comprado regalos grandes y lujosos”, explicó a E! News en diciembre. “Cuando veo cosas a lo largo de los años que creo que le gustarían, cuando estoy fuera, recojo cosas y se las doy”.
Era una tradición que a Carl también le gustaba. Como ella misma señaló: “Él sabe que me encanta cocinar cuando estoy en casa y siempre me compra algo para la cocina. Una olla o sartén nueva o algo que ha visto en la televisión y cree que me puede gustar”.
Por eso Dolly dijo que “nunca perdía” la oportunidad de pasar la Navidad con Carl. Después de todo, las fiestas son lo que ella llama un “momento sagrado” para la pareja.
“Intento reservar todas mis cosas con antelación”, explicó la estrella que trabaja de 9 a 5 , y dijo que a menudo le dice a su equipo: “No me reserven, especialmente para la semana de Navidad, porque necesito estar en casa con mi familia”.
Para conocer más sobre la historia de amor de Dolly con Carl, sigue leyendo…
Nueva chica en la ciudad
Dolly Parton dejó a dos novios en su ciudad natal de Sevierville, Tennessee, por lo que iniciar una nueva relación era lo último que tenía en mente cuando se mudó a Nashville en 1964, justo después de graduarse de la escuela secundaria.
Por desgracia, conoció a Carl Dean mientras caminaba por la calle camino a la lavandería el día que llegó a Music City.
As remembered by Parton (Dean—who died March 3, 2025, at the age of 82—never spoke to the press), he was driving by in a white Chevrolet when he called out, “You’re gonna get sunburnt out here, little lady!”
Dolly Parton/Instagram
They got to talking “and I fell for him, and he fell for me,” she wrote in her 2020 book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. In another interview, the 5-foot artist, who was 18 when they met, recalled how tan Dean was as he towered over her at 6-foot-2. (The 22-year-old had an asphalt paving business with his father, so was bronzed from working outside.)
She did not, however, hop right into his car. “You gotta know somebody or they may take you on a back road and kill you,” she pointed out, per Stephen Miller‘s 2011 biography, Smart Blonde. Parton did invite Dean to visit her at her aunt and uncle’s house the next day, which he did, though she would only sit with him outside. He came back every day for a week and when he took her out for their first date, he drove her to his parents’ house first because, Parton said, “he said he knew right from the minute he saw me that that’s the one he wanted.”
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Artist of Many Talents
But as she started to make a name for herself as a songwriter, collaborating frequently with her uncle Bill Owens, her boss at Combine Music, Fred Foster, warned it would be a bad idea for her to get married, as she was on the verge of getting her big break as a singer.
Instead, she and Dean—who’d been planning a big wedding—didn’t put off getting married another day, eloping to Ringgold, Ga., and tying the knot May 30, 1966, with only mother-of-the-bride Avie Lee Parton by their side (and serving as their wedding photographer).
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They kept it so quiet, Foster didn’t even know they were husband and wife for a year, until one day the label exec—pointing to Parton’s growing success—cracked, “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t get married?”
The “Jolene” singer has explained that, while her passport says Dolly Parton Dean, she didn’t change her name professionally because she already had a record deal with her maiden name.
“Anyway, if I had chosen the name Dolly Dean,” she cracked to The Guardian in 2014, “I’d have been Double D. Again!”
Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
Parton did bring her spouse to one big event, the BMI Awards banquet in 1966, where she and Owens were being honored in the country category for writing “Put It Off Until Tomorrow.”
Afterward, Dean started pulling off his tuxedo before they’d even reached the car. “He said, ‘I’m happy for you,'” Parton wrote in her book. “‘I want you to do what you want to do. But don’t ever ask me to go to another one of them damn things, because I ain’t going.’ And he never has.”
That was the first of 48 BMI Awards she has received, to go with the 10 Grammys (not including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011), nine Country Music Association Awards, 13 Academy of Country Music Awards and a host of other accolades.
But the real prize was always waiting for Parton at home.
Chris Walter/WireImage
Making It Work
“I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love,” the 9 to 5 star told People in 2018. “I always say ‘Stay gone!’ and there’s a lot of truth to that. I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do.”
One of their earliest dinner dates was at the McDonald’s drive-thru window in Dean’s Chevy, Parton recalled, and their tastes as a couple never got a whole lot fancier (though Forbes put Parton’s estimated net worth at $440 million in 2023). They continued to patronize local restaurants and go on road trips, Ringgold—where they said “I do”—being one of their regular destinations.
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“I love to read. I love to cook. I love hanging out with my husband, riding around in our little RV,” Parton told Billboard in 2014. “Even when I get off the road after traveling thousands of miles, I’ll say, ‘Get the camper; let’s go somewhere.’ He’ll say, ‘Are you kidding? Ain’t you tired of riding?’ ‘No, I’m a gypsy. I want to do that.’ My life is fairly simple when I’m out of the limelight.”
Though if you wanted to catch her and Dean at Publix or Walmart, you had to stay up late.
“We’d go in the middle of the night to those places that are open 24 hours a day,” Parton told reporters in 2019 while celebrating the premiere of her Netflix series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. “You’d be surprised at how lucky I’d get with that. You see a few people, and I don’t mind—I love people—I just don’t want to slow up my shopping.”
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Carl Dean’s 15 Minutes
While the lack of photos of the pair out in public may have frustrated Parton watchers over the years—”That has led a lot of people to believe that my husband doesn’t exist and that I made him up,” she wrote in her 2020 book—the singer has shared a few throwback snapshots with the world.
And she cheekily included her man on the cover of her 1969 album My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy, a composite image showing Parton daydreaming away about her rugged fellow in the lumberjack shirt.
But Parton respected Dean’s aversion to the spotlight, so she kept him out of it as much as possible.
“He’s like a quiet, reserved person,” she told ET in 2020, “and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace—and he’s right about that.”
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I Will Always Love You
When they renewed their vows at home on their 50th anniversary, Parton finally got to wear the dazzling wedding dress of her dreams. She also penned a song to go with their vows, “Forever Love,” one of several tracks inspired by her and Dean’s forever-love affair on her 2016 album Pure and Simple.
“I got all dressed up in the most beautiful gown you’ve ever seen and dressed that husband of mine up,” she told Rolling Stone of their second big day. “He looked like a handsome dude out of Hollywood. We had a few family and friends around. We didn’t plan anything big at all because we didn’t want any kind of strain, any kind of tension, any kind of commotion, so we planned it cleverly and carefully. We just had a simple little ceremony at our chapel at our place…We just had fun with it.”
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Along with the usual questions about her secrets to marital success, Parton also fielded her share of inquiries about her and Dean’s status as a family of two.
“I used to think I should regret it,” Parton told Billboard about not having children. “Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids. We weren’t doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn’t turn out that way. Now I say, ‘God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine.'”
She shared with The Guardian that if they’d ever had a little girl, they would’ve named her Carla, and she and Dean thought a lot about what their kids might have been like.
“I would have been a great mother, I think,” Parton said. “I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”
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Pero como cuarta de 12 hermanos, ha tenido muchas personas en su vida a quienes adorar.
“Soy muy unida a mi familia (cinco de mis hermanos y hermanas menores vivieron conmigo y Carl durante muchos años) y somos muy unidos a nuestros sobrinos y sobrinas”, le dijo a Billboard . “Ahora que Carl y yo somos mayores, a menudo decimos: ‘¿No te alegras de no haber tenido hijos? Ahora no tenemos hijos de los que preocuparnos'”.
Lo que también nos dejó más tiempo para centrarnos el uno en el otro.
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Felices para siempre
“Todavía tenemos nuestros pequeños momentos, como en primavera, cuando brotan los primeros narcisos amarillos”, dijo Parton a People en 2020. “Aunque todavía haya algo de nieve, mi marido siempre me trae un ramo de flores y, por lo general, me escribe un pequeño poema. Para mí, eso no tiene precio. Es como una cita en sí misma”.
Ya fuera una cena a la luz de las velas en casa o salir a pasar la noche en un Days Inn (“siempre que la cama esté limpia y haya un baño”), eran más felices haciendo simplemente lo suyo.
Y aunque Dean nunca fue a los Grammy ni a los Oscar, ya que Parton rara vez está sin maquillaje (ni siquiera el sueño es rival para su rímel) y nunca necesitó otra razón que estar despierta para arreglarse, todavía veía regularmente a su esposa en su elemento glamoroso.
“Él sabe que siempre estaré preparada para él porque no creo en volver a casa y ser una descuidada”, dijo. Pero en general, “no le importa lo que me ponga siempre y cuando sea feliz. Me ama como soy”.
