Washington (AFP) – The husband of Dolly Parton, Carl Dean, died Monday aged 82, the country music superstar said, after nearly 60 years of marriage kept out of the spotlight despite the singer’s chart-topping fame. “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years,” Parton wrote in a post on X.
The singer-songwriter and actor met Dean in 1964 outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat in Nashville, Tennessee on the day she moved to the country music capital. She was 18 and he was 21. “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” said the “Jolene” singer, known for her glamour and gravity-defying hairdos, according to a post on her website. “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about,” she added.
The pair married two years later in May 1966 in a simple ceremony attended only by Parton’s mother, the preacher, and his wife. The low-key wedding was a fitting start for the couple’s 58-year marriage, with Dean managing to stay away from the cameras. The Nashville native worked as an asphalt paver as his wife’s music career rocketed to earn her the title of the “queen of country music.”
The pair enjoyed a simple private life far from the spotlight. “We like to get out in our little RV and just be simple,” Parton told People magazine in 2015. “I love to read, I love to cook, I love to be with my husband.” The couple never had children.
Dean was born in 1942 to Edgar “Ed” Henry Dean and Virginia “Ginny” Bates — whom Parton affectionately referred to as Mama Dean and said she was her best friend, according to the singer’s website. Carl Dean leaves behind two siblings, Sandra and Donnie.
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