Dolly Parton has explained why her 58-year-old husband refuses to join her on public occasions.
Long-lasting Hollywood love stories are difficult to come by. However, you’d be excused for not knowing that the ‘Jolene’ singer and her husband, Carl Dean, had been married since 1966.
Despite being one of the most legendary performers of all time, Parton rarely appears with Dean in photos taken at A-list events and on red carpets.
When nominated for Song of the Year at the BMI Awards in 1967, the 11-time Grammy winner rented a tuxedo and persuaded her husband to accompany her.
She won the prize, but Dean admitted that the flash and dazzle of red carpets made him feel so uncomfortable.
During an interview with the Dumb Blonde podcast, the 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 ain’t going,’ 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 has endured the test of time, and the pair reaffirmed their vows in 2016 at their Nashville home.
Parton and Dean appear to be diametrically opposed, and not simply in terms of their attitudes toward fame. “We are amusing, and we have a lot of fun,” she said. “He is quiet, and I am loud.
“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. Sparks flew when Dean drove by in his pickup truck and ‘hollered’ at Parton, she told The New York Times in 1976.
Throughout Parton’s unprecedented climb to popularity, her husband supported her behind the scenes while running a road-paving business.
They have managed to maintain their spark decades later, with Parton stating in 2022 that she still dresses up for her lover at home.
“Every day, I put on makeup and fix my hair because I think, ‘Well, I’m out here, and everybody else sees me all dressed up, and I’m not going to just go home and just flop on him,’” she told the news organization E! News.
There you have it, folks: romance is not dead!
