Dolly Parton is out there when it comes to her career, her sense of humor, her style, her philanthropy and pretty much everything else you might associate with the crowd-pleasing superstar, whose appeal has known no bounds.
But while she’s brought legions of fans to tears singing about the rosy highs and devastating lows of love, her own romance has been harmoniously playing out behind closed doors. Or at least within the confines of their sprawling property in Brentwood, Tenn., where she and husband Carl Dean have called home since 1999—and where he prefers to stay tinkering in the barn while his wife is on the road.
“It’s worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together,” Parton told E! News in May of her husband of now 58 years. “So the fact that there’s some little space that makes it exciting when you go home.”
And since they spend so much time apart, Dean the homebody and Parton the platinum-selling artist—who’s busy as ever at 79—they always have plenty to catch up on whenever they reunite.
“He loves music,” Parton said of the 82-year-old, “but he’s not in the music business at all, so we have different things to talk about, his world and my world, and we work really well together. We have a lot of love and respect for each other, and I think the key to all of it—we both have a crazy, warped sense of humor, so we have a lot of fun.”
So Dean being absent from the public eye for more than half a century—unless you happened to catch him watching his wife perform at a county fair, his preferred kind of venue—has never been a sign of trouble in paradise (or Dollywood).
Quite the opposite, in fact.
“He’s always supporting me as long as I don’t try to drag him in on it,” Parton told People in 2019, explaining why we never see her spouse. “He’s always been my biggest fan behind the scenes.”
And Dean has been in her corner since day one, literally.
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