Carl Dean, Dolly Parton's husband of 60 years, dead at 82

The Associated Press

· Posted: Mar 03, 2025 7:59 PM EST | Last Updated: March 4

Carl Dean, Dolly Parton's hubby of astir 60 years, died Monday successful Nashville. He was 82.

According to a connection provided to The Associated Press by Parton's publicist, Dean volition beryllium laid to remainder successful a backstage ceremonial with contiguous household attending.

"Carl and I spent galore fantastic years together. Words can't bash justness to the emotion we shared for implicit 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy," Parton wrote in a statement.

The household has asked for respect and privateness astatine this time. No origin of decease was announced.

Parton met Dean extracurricular the Wishy Washy Laundromat the time she moved to Nashville astatine 18.

"I was amazed and delighted that portion helium talked to me, helium looked astatine my look (a uncommon happening for me)," Parton described the meeting. "He seemed to beryllium genuinely funny successful uncovering retired who I was and what I was about."

They joined 2 years later, connected Memorial Day — May 30, 1966 — successful a tiny ceremonial successful Ringgold, Ga.

Dean was a businessman, having owned an asphalt-paving concern successful Nashville. His parents, Virginia "Ginny" Bates Dean and Edgar "Ed" Henry Dean, had 3 children. Parton referred to his parent arsenic "Mama Dean." 

Inspired deed opus Jolene

Dean besides inspired Parton's hit, Jolene. Parton told NPR successful 2008 that she wrote the opus astir a flirty bank teller who seemed to instrumentality an involvement successful him.

"She got this unspeakable crush connected my husband," she said. "And helium conscionable loved going to the slope due to the fact that she paid him truthful overmuch attention. It was benignant of like a moving gag betwixt america — erstwhile I was saying, 'Hell, you're spending a batch of clip astatine the bank. I don't judge we've got that benignant of money.' So it's truly an guiltless opus each around, but sounds similar a dreadful one."

Dean is survived by Parton and his 2 siblings, Sandra and Donnie.

Parton and Dean kept strict privateness astir their narration for decades, Parton telling The Associated Press successful 1984: "A batch of radical accidental there's nary Carl Dean, that he's conscionable idiosyncratic I made up to support different radical disconnected me."

She joked that she'd similar to airs with him connected the screen of a magazine: "So that radical could astatine slightest cognize that I'm not joined to a wart oregon something."

In 2023, Parton told AP Dean helped inspire her 2023 Rockstar album.

"He's a large stone and roller," she said. The opus My Blue Tears, which was written erstwhile Parton was with The Porter Wagoner Show in the precocious 1960s and aboriginal '70s, is "one of my husband's favourite songs that I ever wrote," she said. "I thought, 'Well, I amended enactment 1 of Carl's favourites of excavation successful here."

She besides covered a fewer of his favourites connected the impermanent detour from state music: Lynyrd Skynyrd 's Free Bird and Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.