Dolly Parton died only one year after husband of 59 years
Country star had been married to Carl Thomas Dean for nearly 60 years
Dolly Parton has died aged 80, her family has confirmed, her death coming just one year after that of her husband of nearly 60 years.
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Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Celine Dion are among the singers to have paid tribute to Parton, who died on Tuesday after having cancer.
Parton left a legacy as one of the best-selling female artists of all time, with more than 100 million records sold.
But unlike the iconic country singer, little is known about her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who kept largely out of the limelight during his wife's long and illustrious career.
Read also: Gasps heard as audience at 9 To 5 musical told of Dolly Parton’s death
Who was Dolly Parton married to?
Parton met Carl Thomas Dean, who was four years older, outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville at 18.
"I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me)," Parton described the meeting.
"He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about."
They married two years later, on Memorial Day, May 30, 1966, in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia, when she was 20.
The song Jolene, where an attractive woman flirts with her husband, is a true story about a bank clerk - she later revealed - which is why she did not perform it as often as her other hits, as she felt emotional about it.
Parton shared in interviews that he did not care for anybody else's company apart from hers and that he was a "loner" in some senses.
His general reclusiveness became a running joke, with Parton saying in the 1980s: "A lot of people say there's no Carl Dean, that he's just somebody I made up to keep other people off me."
She also joked that she would like to pose with him on the cover of a magazine "so that people could at least know that I'm not married to a wart or something".
He did, however, have a romantic side and would write her poetry and buy her flowers.
“We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun," she told People in 2015. "I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me.”
The pair did not have children but played a role in raising her younger siblings and cousins in Nashville, Parton being the fourth of 12 children.
Parton told People, after his death, in November 2025: “Most people don’t stay that close that long. That’s a loss. Nobody can ever know that unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
"He will always be in my heart and in my memories.”
When did her husband die?
Dean died in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 3, 2025, aged 82.
He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2019.
"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," Parton wrote in a statement.