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Dolly Parton has paid tribute to her husband, Carl Dean, following his death aged 82.
The country music legend met her first and only husband, a businessman who owned a Nashville asphalt company, when she was 18, on the day she moved to the Tennessee capital. They were married two years later on 30 May 1966.
“I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” Parton wrote of their encounter outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat. “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”
In a statement, Parton, 79, said Dean died on Monday 3 March. A cause of death was not disclosed.
“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,” she said.
Through the years, Dean inspired much of Parton’s work, most famously “Jolene”, one of her biggest hits, when he became the subject of a flirtatious bank teller’s attention.
She regaled her audience at Glastonbury with the story behind the song in 2014, when she performed in the Legends slot on the Pyramid Stage.
“Now, some of you may or may not know that this song was loosely based on a little bit of truth,” she told her fans. “I wrote that years ago when my husband [was] spending a little more time with Jolene than I thought he should be.”
As the crowd booed, she continued: “I got rid of that redhead woman in a hurry. I want you folks to know, though, that something good can come from anything. Had it not been for that woman I would never have written ‘Jolene’, and I wouldn’t have made all that money, so thank you, Jolene.”
Fifty years after the song was first released, Parton reflected on how it had affected her relationship with Dean during an appearance on the BBC’s The One Show.
“He was a little embarrassed when I wrote the song ‘Jolene’ because, actually, it wasn’t as serious [as it seems],” she explained.
“I was just jealous ‘cause she was a beautiful woman and he was just flirting.”
Dolly Parton performing at Glastonbury Festival (PA Archive)
A number of other artists have covered “Jolene” over the years, including Parton’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus, who has also duetted on the song with her on several occasions.
More recently, pop megastar Beyoncé featured her take on the song on her Grammy-winning 2024 album, Cowboy Carter. Parton praised Beyoncé’s lyrical changes, commenting: “Beyoncé is giving that girl some trouble and she deserves it.”
In an interview with The Independent, Parton said that Dean also inspired her 2023 album Rockstar, as many of the songs she chose to cover were his favourites.
Dolly Parton on the cover of her 2023 album, ‘Rockstar’
Parton and Dean kept their relationship strictly private, prompting her to tell the Associated Press in 1984 that people often doubted her husband’s existence.
“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 said, joking that he had only seen her perform once. She added that he was a “romantic” who would occasionally write poems for her.
“We’re really very proud of our marriage. It’s the first for both of us. And the last,” Parton wrote in 2011.
Dean is survived by Parton and by his two living siblings, Sandra and Donnie.
Parton’s statement this week said that Dean will be laid to rest in a private ceremony, with “immediate family” attending.
