Dolly Parton Said Her Husband Was the Only ‘Untarnished’ Thing in Her Life
Dolly Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, were together for over six decades. In that time, he was almost never seen publicly, which worked just fine for her. She said she liked to keep her marriage separated from her public life. It kept him “untarnished” by the trappings of fame.
Dolly Parton said her husband remained ‘untarnished’ by her fame
For much of Parton’s career, people either didn’t know she was married or struggled to believe that her husband existed.
“He’s a real mystery person to the public. That’s good, though,” she told Alanna Nash in the book Dolly: The Biography. “I mean, that’s fine with us, and fine with him. He loves me good, and my career bein’ separate from my marriage is perfectly natural for us. We like it that way. It’s too right and too natural and too comfortable and too secure for it to ever be anything else.”
She said it bothered her to hear rumors about Dean, though. She avoided speaking about him because she knew her words could get twisted by the press. Parton wanted to protect Dean.
“He’s just the most precious thing in the world,” she said. “He’s the only thing that remains untarnished in this business. And then people will take what little information you’re willing to give …”
He shared why he didn’t want the spotlight
Dean stayed away from the public eye, but he was also reportedly quiet in person.
“Carl only talks to people he likes,” Parton’s friend Lucy Adams said. “He’ll talk to you if you go out there, but if he doesn’t have to, he won’t.”
One group of people he had little interest in talking to was the press. He spoke about why he almost never gave interviews.
“I have a good business,” he said. “Dolly has her work and I have mine. We didn’t plan our lives to come out this way. It just snowballed. If I run for president one day, then I’ll talk about me. But Dolly is the one in the public eye, not me. If I went out looking for publicity, it would only detract from what she’s doing. And I’m not going to take anything away from her. She’s earned it.”
Those who knew Dolly Parton and her husband could see how much they loved each other
The Stamps Quartet’s Ed Enoch spent time with Dean and said his support of Parton’s career wasn’t just lip service to the press.
“He was happy for her to have her career, and we used to talk about his wife traveling on the road. He said it didn’t matter to him, that he wanted her to have her place, and he was proud of her,” Enoch said, adding, “He really loved her.”
Enoch said it was clear from the way the couple interacted that they loved each other deeply.
“They was just typical married people, you know,” Enoch said. “They seemed very, very happy. I was very much impressed with that, ‘cause they seemed so much in love. But it was a respect of one for the other. I could tell how much she tried to make him feel loved. It wasn’t overtly sexual. You don’t have to throw somebody to the ground, you know. I could just tell that she really admired and really cared for him. It was in her eyes and on her face. She didn’t have to say a word.”
In 2025, Dean died at the age of 82.
