Carl Dean, Dolly Parton’s Husband of Nearly 60 Years, Dies at 82

Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who met his future wife, Dolly Parton, outside a Nashville laundromat more than six decades ago and quietly championed her as she rose to superstardom, died on Monday. He was 82. Ms. Parton announced his death in a statement shared on social media. No cause was given. While his wife was a world-famous star, Mr. Dean was a private man who kept a low profile. In a 2020 interview, Ms. Parton said her husband had never wanted to be in the spotlight. ‘It’s just not who he is,’ Ms. Parton said. ‘He’s like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace and he’s right about that.’

Mr. Dean was born to Virginia Bates Dean, known as Ginny, and Edgar Henry Dean, according to Ms. Parton’s website. He lived in East Ridge, Tenn., as a child, Ms. Parton told a local news channel in Chattanooga, Tenn. While Ms. Parton became a country star, he pursued a quiet life owning an asphalt-paving business.  The couple met outside the WishyWashy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville in 1964, according to Ms. Parton’s website, when Ms. Parton was 18 and Mr. Dean was 21. They married two years later on Memorial Day in 1966 in Ringgold, Ga., with only Ms. Parton’s mother, a preacher, and his wife in attendance.

Ms. Parton and Mr. Dean lived on a farm outside Nashville for decades. Ms. Parton’s 1973 hit song ‘Jolene’ was inspired by a bank teller who took interest in her husband in the early days of their marriage, she said in an interview in 2008. ‘He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention,’ Ms. Parton said in the interview. ‘It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.’

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— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 4, 2025

Her 2012 love ballad ‘From Here to the Moon and Back’ was also inspired by Mr. Dean, according to her website, and she said that her 2023 album ‘Rockstar’ was influenced by his love of rock music. ‘From the time I met him in 1964 — he just had rock ‘n’ roll blasting. That’s his music, she said. The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2016 by renewing their vows, an event that inspired her album ‘Pure & Simple,’ Ms. Parton told in 2016. Mr. Dean did not typically do interviews. So rarely did Mr. Dean enter the spotlight that at certain points rumors swirled that the two were not actually married, which Ms. Parton always dispelled.

‘They think I just made him up,’ Ms. Parton said in a television interview in 2024, referring to Mr. Dean. In the same interview, Ms. Parton recounted the story of going to her first awards dinner with Mr. Dean, who begrudgingly attended but was ‘absolutely miserable.’ After that, ‘we got in the car and he said, ‘You know what, I want you to do really well,’ Ms. Parton recalled, adding that he told her he ‘ain’t ever going to more of them damn things.’ She said, with a chuckle, that she stopped asking him to attend her events after that.

Ms. Parton has been asked in interviews over the years about wanting children. The couple talked and ‘dreamed about it’ after they first got married, Ms. Parton said to an established magazine, but it wasn’t meant to be, she said. ‘Now that we’re older? We’re glad. Mr. Dean was one of the stabilizing forces in Ms. Parton’s life, Ms. Parton said. ‘God has been good to me,’ she said. ‘He gave me Carl Dean. And that was the perfect man that I needed.’

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