Dolly Parton’s beloved husband, Carl Dean, has died. He was 82.
“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together,” Parton said. “Words can’t do justice for the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”Parton was 18 when she met Dean in 1964 on the first day she moved to Nashville. She was leaving the Wishy Washy Laundromat when 21-year-old Dean waved and spoke to her. It was love at first sight.
“My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl.’ My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin,'” Dean recalled in 2016 after the couple renewed their vows for their 50th wedding anniversary. “And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”
Parton and Dean kept strict privacy around their relationship for decades, Parton telling The Associated Press in 1984: “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 joked that she’d 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.”