Dolly Parton Says This Is the Secret to Her 57-Year Marriage to Carl Dean

Sometimes, true love flourishes under a different 9 to 5.

In fact, Dolly Parton credits making sure to spend time apart as the source of success for her 57-year marriage to Carl Dean. 

"I'm just saying, anything new gets old," she told E! News' Keltie Knight and Justin Sylvester at Dollywood's new "The Dolly Parton Experience" in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. "And I think if you just kind of stay together so much, you just nitpick every little thing and notice all that."

Because as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. "It's worked for us because we both do different things and it's exciting when we are together," Dolly continued. "So the fact that there's some little space that makes it exciting when you go home." (For more with Dolly, tune into E! News Monday, June 3 at 11 p.m.) 

But of course, after almost six decades of marriage, Dolly, 78, and Carl, 81, do have a number of favorite go-to activities for when they do spend time together. 

"We just enjoy each other," the music legend explained. "I like to cook. And one of the things that we like to do—not necessarily a date night, we have a lot of date days—we have our little RV and we like to travel around. Going down and get some food or I'll make a picnic and we go down to the river and have a picnic and just kind of ride around and do our little things."

And on whether Carl has seen the "9 to 5" singer without her signature makeup and hair?

"Oh, of course," Dolly laughed. "Carl has seen me every which way. In fact, I remember when we first got married, I had just got out of the shower and I didn't have my shoes on. He said, 'Well, you ain't big as a bar soap.'"

Another key to success in their marriage? Resecting each other's boundaries: namely, Carl's desire to remain out of the spotlight.

"Carl has never been in the limelight and all, never wanted to be in it," Dolly shared on her Apple Music radio show What Would Dolly Do? in November. "He don't like it."

In fact, it was only shortly after their 1966 nuptials that it became clear where Carl's preferences lie.

"He went to one thing with me early on when we first married to a BMI Song of the Year, and he came out there taking off his tuxedo, his tie, and all that, and said, 'Don't ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain't going,'" she remembered. "I never asked him and he never did." 

And in the time since, their partnership has flourished. For a full look at the couple's fairytale love story, keep reading.

Dolly Parton left two boyfriends behind in her hometown of Sevierville, Tenn., so getting into a new relationship was the last thing on her mind when she moved to Nashville in 1964, right after graduating from high school.

Alas, she met Carl Dean while walking down the street on her way to the laundromat the day she arrived in Music City.

As remembered by Parton (Dean has never spoken to the press), he was driving by in a white Chevrolet when he called out, "You're gonna get sunburnt out here, little lady!"

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."

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).

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!"

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 has been waiting for Parton at home.  

"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 still like to patronize local restaurants and go on road trips, Ringgold—where they said "I do"—being one of their regular destinations.

"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 want to catch her and Dean at Publix or Walmart, be prepared 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."

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 respects Dean's aversion to the spotlight, so she's 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."

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."

Along with the usual questions about her secrets to marital success, Parton has also fielded her share of inquiries about her and Dean's enduring 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."

But as the fourth of 12 siblings, she has had plenty of people in her life to dote on.

"I'm very close to my family—five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years— and we're very close to our nieces and nephews," she told Billboard. "Now that Carl and I are older, we often say, 'Aren't you glad we didn't have kids? Now we don't have kids to worry about.'"

Which also leaves more time to focus on each other.

"We still have our little times, like in the springtime when the first yellow daffodils come out," Parton told People in 2020. "Even if there's still some snow around it, my husband always brings me a bouquet. And he'll usually write me a little poem. Which to me, that's priceless. That's like a date in itself."

Whether they're having a candlelit dinner at home or hitting the road and overnighting in a Days Inn ("as long as the bed's clean and there's a bathroom"), they're happiest just doing their thing.

And though Dean hasn't been to the Grammys or the Oscars, since Parton is rarely without makeup (even sleep is no match for her mascara) and has never needed a reason other than being awake to get all dolled up, he still sees his wife in her glamorous element.

"He knows I'm always going to kind of be fixed up for him because I don't believe in going home and being a slouch," she said. But for the most part, "He doesn't care what I wear as long as I'm happy. He loves me the way I am."

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