“Ours is a great old love story,” Parton previously told PEOPLE of her late husband, who died in March 2025 at age 82
Credit: courtesy Dolly Parton
NEED TO KNOW
- Dolly Parton died over a year after the death of her husband Carl Dean, who died in March 2025 at age 82
- The country legend, who was married to Dean for nearly 59 years, opened up about how his death affected in her in several emotional interviews
- Parton said in her November 2025 PEOPLE cover story that “without Carl, I wouldn’t be here”
“Ours is a great old love story.”
That’s what Dolly Parton told PEOPLE of her 60-year romance with husband, Carl Thomas Dean, months after his death at 82 in March 2025.
The country legend, who died over a year later on Tuesday, Aug. 25, first crossed paths with Dean at a Nashville laundromat in 1964 when she was 18, and they said “I do” two years later.
The couple spent nearly 59 years married, during which Parton’s longtime spouse — who she described to PEOPLE as a “loner” who was “very independent” — was rarely seen in public and spent most of his time on their farm.
In the time since Dean’s death, Parton opened up about their decades-long romance, as well as the loss she felt without him, in several emotional interviews.
Credit: courtesy Dolly Parton
“Ours is a great old love story. Most people don’t stay that close that long. That’s a loss,” Parton said of Dean in her November 2025 PEOPLE cover story. “Nobody can ever know that unless you’ve experienced it yourself. He will always be in my heart and in my memories.”
At the time, Parton also described her ultra-private husband as an anchor, noting “without Carl, I wouldn’t be here.”
Dean “was very independent, and he liked being alone. He didn’t really care about being with anybody but me,” she explained in the same interview. “He had a few friends, but he loved being on the farm and doing his thing. He was kind of a loner, which worked out best for us.”
Parton had had a difficult year without Dean, she said while giving a health update earlier this year — a message to fans that came after she admitted that she “didn’t take care of” herself while tending to her “very sick” spouse.
“I want you to know also that a lot of you have been concerned about me and Carl, and you were so great about that. But after going through a year of firsts, I mean the holidays, and especially our wedding anniversary, and the date of his death, March 3, that was hard for me,” she said in an Instagram video shared May 4.
Credit: Dolly Parton/Instagram
“But I will always love him, and I will always miss him,” she added of Dean, “but you would be surprised at how much your love and concern meant to me during that time.”
A year earlier, Parton had called living in the wake of her spouse’s death a “big adjustment.” “I get very emotional when people bring it up,” Parton said while appearing on Today in May 2025, two months after Dean’s death. “But we were together 60 years. I’ve loved him since I was 18 years old.”
Since Dean died, “It’s a big adjustment just trying to change patterns and habits,” Parton added. “I’ll do fine, and I’m very involved in my work and that’s been the best thing that could happen to me. But I’ll always miss him, of course, and always love him. He was a great partner to me.”
Several weeks after Dean’s death, Parton said she was “doing better than I thought I would” during an interview with Knox News, but was adjusting to life without him. “I’ve been with him 60 years. So, I’m going to have to relearn some of the things that we’ve done,” she said at the time. “But I’ll keep him always close.”
The country legend added in her May Today sit-down that she had cried at one of her Dollywood parades shortly after Dean’s death, which allowed her to let out some of the feelings she said she’d been holding onto in the aftermath.
“I got very emotional that day after the parade because there was just so much love like that,” she explained of the fan event. “Right after I had lost Carl and I was just so bottled up with emotion, and I got in the van and just boo-hooed for the longest time, just feeling all that love and emotion.”
Similarly, Parton told Khloé Kardashian that she had been putting some things “on hold” in the wake of Dean’s death due to her emotional state.
“My husband passed away three months ago; when you asked me if there’s stuff that I’ve started and haven’t finished, several things I’ve wanted to start but I can’t do it,” she said on the reality star’s Khloé In Wonder Land podcast in July 2025. “I will later, but I’m just coming up with such wonderful, beautiful ideas, but I think I won’t finish it.”
“I can’t do it right now because I’ve got so many other things, and I can’t afford the luxury of getting that emotional right now,” the country icon continued. “So there are times like that, things like that that will stall you a little bit, but I’ll write something else though if it comes. So, I’m just putting that all on hold.”
Parton did release a song, “If You Hadn’t Been There,” days after Dean’s death, however. She also dedicated the track to her longtime love, who appeared in the cover art alongside her.
Credit: Courtesy of Dolly Parton
In a message announcing the dedication on Instagram, the country legend wrote: “I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old. We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together. Like all great love stories, they never end. They live on in memory and song. He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him.”
Parton opened up about the emotional track in an interview with Entertainment Tonight shortly after its release.
“When Carl did pass away, I thought, ‘I gotta do something so I’m just gonna put that song out as a tribute to him,’” she told ET, adding that she was “having to really go through a lot trying to figure out how to be without him because I was with him for so long.”
“He did suffer a lot for the last few years, and there’s a part of me that’s happy he’s at peace and at rest,” Parton added at the time of Dean. “But then of course, there’s that part of me that will miss him forever and long for him every day. For the rest of my life, I’m sure.”
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Parton immortalized their love story in Dolly: A True Original Musical, which opened in Nashville in 2025 and is heading to Broadway on Parton’s birthday, Jan. 19, 2027. In her 2025 PEOPLE cover, she said she found “healing” in seeing their love portrayed onstage.
“His whole thing was he was famous for not being famous. I’ve exposed him now. It’s probably a good thing he’s gone or he’d kick my ass,” Parton quipped to PEOPLE of opening up about her longtime partner in the musical. “But I think that he’d appreciate how I’ve presented our love.”
When she saw the actor who plays Dean in the musical based on her life, the country icon said she almost felt as if her love is still with her.
“It makes me happy when he says in the show, ‘Hello, I’m Carl Dean,’ he gets applause,” Parton said of the 2025 Nashville production. “When I watch the show, it’s healing in a way. It’s almost like he was never gone. So now he’ll always be here, too.”
Parton’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, shared the news of the icon’s death in an Aug. 25 Instagram video. “My name is Bryan Seaver, son of Cassie Parton, and I’m representing the Parton and Owens family today announcing the passing of my aunt, Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean, Sister, Sis and Granny to one generation and Gigi to the next,” he said in the video, which posted to Parton’s social media accounts.
“This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality. As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father Larry held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it until now.”
Seaver added: “It is an honor, an honor that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness. But sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl, her parents and countless others who have watched her and longed to meet her in the heavens.”
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