Who Is Dolly Parton's Husband Carl Dean?

Get all the details on Dolly Parton and Carl Dean's marriage, wedding, how they met, and the songs she has written about her husband.

Dolly Parton is one of the most famous country singers in the world. She got into the industry at a young age, and knows the spotlight like the back of her hand. If you've followed her career, you've come to know a lot about Parton, too. And while her fame and success is all her own doing, there's still a part of her life you probably know almost nothing about: Dolly Parton's husband Carl Dean.

And that’s just the way he likes it! Her famously private hubby of nearly five decades has never been a fan of the limelight, almost never appearing in public with his wife, and rarely giving interviews.

Dean apparently figured out early on that life in the spotlight was not for him. 

"I love you, and I will support you in your career any way I can, but I am not going to any more of these wingdings,” he reportedly told his wife after attending an awards show in 1966, according to Rolling Stone. 

While Dean is known for guarding his privacy, Parton will be dragging him into the spotlight with her upcoming rock album dedicated to the music he loves.

“I’m going to do a lot of his favorite songs,” she told E! News prior to her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022. “He loves Mick Jagger, he loves ‘Satisfaction’ — those kind of songs. I’m hoping to have Elton John. I’m hoping to have just a lot of the big classic artists singing some of the classic songs.” 

Here are a few more things about him we've learned through the years, thanks to all the times Parton, 76, has gushed about him as a caring, supportive spouse. Read on to learn more about the man who stole the country superstar’s heart!

Who is Dolly Parton’s husband?

Dolly Parton’s husband is Carl Dean. He prefers to stay out of the spotlight, so very little is known about his life and work, apart from his famous spouse. According to CountryRebel.com, he has owned an asphalt-laying company in Nashville since 1977, though it's unclear whether he is still actively working in that field.

According to DollyParton.com, Dean's mother and father were Virginia “Ginny” Bates Dean and Edgar “Ed” Henry Dean. Dean has two siblings. Dolly referred to Ginny as Mama Dean and says she was her best friend.

Pretty much everything we know about Dean’s personality comes through sweet things Parton has said about him over the years. 

Related: Dolly Parton Releases Uplifting New Song Inspired by the Pandemic

“I married a really good man, a guy that’s completely different from me,” the country superstar told Parade in 2015. “He’s not in show business. He’s not resentful of any of that. He loves to hear about the things I do. I love to hear about the things he does. So we enjoy each other’s company. We get along good. He’s got a great sense of humor. We’ve just been best buddies and best friends and, evidently, it’s working!”

How did Dolly Parton and Carl Dean meet?

Parton met Dean when she was 18 on her first day in Nashville, where she had moved in the hopes of landing a recording contract. Dean was 21 at the time, according to Country Living, giving them a three-year age difference.

“I was at the laundromat, the Wishy‐Washy—I'd come to Nashville with dirty clothes. I was in such a hurry to get here—and after I'd put my clothes in the machine,” Parton told The New York Times in 1976. “I started walkin’ down the street…and this guy hollered at me, and I waved. Bein’ from the country, I spoke to everybody. And he came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband.”

Parton was wary of dating anyone, but she invited Dean to sit on her aunt’s porch as she babysat her nephew. 

“He came up every day that week and we set out on the porch. I wouldn't even take him in the house,” Parton told The New York Times. “Then my aunt got a day off, and she could keep the kid and that was my first chance to go anywhere with Carl and he drove me straight to his folks’ house and introduced me to his mother and daddy. Cause he said he knew right the minute he saw me that that's the one he wanted.”

Related: Best Breakup Songs of All Time

Carl Dean says it was love at first sight

Parton has talked a lot about her love for Dean over the years, but her press-shy husband has given very few interviews about his wife. However, he did open up publicly about his love for Parton in 2016, when they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by renewing their vows.

"My first thought was 'I'm gonna marry that girl,'" Dean said in a rare public statement, remembering their first meeting. "My second thought was, 'Lord she’s good lookin.' And that was the day my life began. I wouldn't trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth."

When did Dolly Parton and Carl Dean get married?

Parton and Dean tied the knot two years after meeting. Their anniversary is May 30, 1966. They drove to Ringgold, Ga. to get married on Memorial Day in a small, private ceremony with only Parton’s mother, Avie Lee, the pastor and his wife in attendance. 

Dean's mother was thrilled to see her son tie the knot, and originally had hoped they would throw a large wedding.

“When Carl and I told his mother that we were getting married, she was so excited that she was finally gonna get to do a wedding. Because her only daughter had eloped," Parton told CMT in 2016. "So she was so happy she would get to throw a big wedding party.”

However, Parton's label, Monument Records, wanted the singer to wait a year to get married for the sake of building her career, which left Carl's mother "heartbroken," Parton recalled.

So Parton and Dean decided not to wait, and they got married anyway. They exchanged vows in Georgia to avoid their wedding being reported in Tennessee newspapers.

“It was just my mother and Carl and me,” Parton told CMT. “My mother made me a little white dress and a little bouquet and a little Bible. But I said, ‘I can’t get married in a courthouse because I’ll never feel married.’ So we found a little Baptist church in town, and went up to Pastor Don Duvall and said, ‘Would you marry us?’ We got pictures on the steps right outside the church.”

Although they went against the advice of Parton's label, we'd say her career turned out just fine!

They renewed their vows on their 50th anniversary. "If I had it to do all over, I'd do it all over again, and we did," said Parton in a statement, according to ET Online. "I'm dragging him kicking and screaming into the next 50 years. Wish us luck."

Parton said she and her husband "just had fun" with their vow renewal ceremony, enjoying a laid-back day with loved ones.

“I got all dressed up in the most beautiful gown you’ve ever seen and dressed that husband of mine up. He looked like a handsome dude out of Hollywood,” she told Rolling Stone in 2016. “We had a few family and friends around. We didn’t plan anything big at all because we didn’t want any kind of strain, any kind of tension, any kind of commotion, so we planned it cleverly and carefully. We just had a simple little ceremony at our chapel at our place."

How many children did Dolly Parton and her husband have?

Parton and Dean do not have any children.

"God has a plan for everything," Parton said on the Today show in 2017. "I think it probably was his plan for me not to have kids so everybody's kids could be mine. And they are now."

Why did Dolly Parton and her husband not have children?

She shared with CBS in a Sunday Morning interview, “You make your choices, you make your sacrifices and I never looked back." She continued, "I knew early on that I was going to walk that road until God told me to stop."

Which Dolly Parton songs are about her husband?

Parton confirmed on her official website that her song, “From Here to the Moon and Back” is about her “heartfelt emotions for Carl.”

“From here to the moon and back / Who else in this world will love you like that? / Love is everlasting, I promise you that / From here to the moon and back,” the romantic song goes.

"When I wrote 'From Here to the Moon and Back,' I needed to write a beautiful love song," Parton told The Boot in 2012, explaining that she wrote the song for her 2012 movie Joyful Noise. "I picked my husband, who I love, and I thought, 'Well, I'll write some beautiful song about him.' It was about my husband in the movie, played by Kris Kristofferson, so I thought in order to make it really real and really touching, I would write it about my real, true emotions about someone I really do love and have loved for more than half of my life."

Dean also reportedly inspired her hit songs “Jolene” and “Forever Love,” according to Country Living. 

While Dean must be flattered to have love songs written about him, Parton revealed that her husband is "not necessarily one of the biggest fans" of her music.

"He likes hard rock, he likes Led Zeppelin and bluegrass music, so my music is somewhere in between. I mean, he doesn't dislike it, but he doesn't go out of his way to play my records, let's put it that way," she told Good Morning Britain in 2019. 

However, she said Dean has always been supportive of her career.

"He’s proud of me and he loves that I love what I do," she said.

Dolly Parton and her husband are super low-key

Despite Parton's megastardom, she and Dean enjoy living a relatively low-key life. For example, when it comes to vacations, don't expect them to splash out on lavish trips to exotic destinations in the public eye. In fact, you may just spot them rolling up to a country motel in their RV.

"We have a little RV, we travel around," she told Parade in 2015. "We drive through these little drive-through restaurants. We sight-see all of Tennessee and Kentucky, the areas that we can get back home from at night. Sometimes we’ll stay over at a Days Inn [motel] where we can just pull up and sneak me in. We don’t care, as long as the bed’s clean and there’s a bathroom. That’s how we live."

And while Parton does enjoy touring and being on stage, she equally loves hanging out with Dean and savoring all the domestic comforts of home.

"I’m happy when I’m on stage, I’m happy when things are going great in the business, but I’m also very happy when I’m home with him and we do our little things together," she said.

As for date nights? Ever since their early courtship, Parton and Dean have preferred to keep things casual.

“When I met my husband, he wanted to take me out to dinner. He pulled up to the drive-in window and got our food at McDonald’s,” Parton recalled in a PEOPLE interview. “We know a few little places we can go without being bothered. He only likes to go places where he can be comfortable!”

What is the secret to Dolly Parton's marriage?

When it comes to relationship advice, Parton says one thing that has kept her long-term marriage alive is spending some time apart, so that she and Dean can really treasure the time they do spend together.

“I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love. I always say, ‘Stay gone!’ and there’s a lot of truth to that," she told PEOPLE in 2018. "I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do.”

The contrast in their personalities also keeps things interesting, Parton told PEOPLE in 2015.

“They say that opposites attract, and it’s true,” she said. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me."

She also told Entertainment Tonight in 2022, "We both have a warped sense of humor. And I think humor, honestly, is one of the best things when you're married like that! Even if you have a problem, if you have a great sense of humor, if you say something you can't take back [you] usually have some crazy way of getting out of it."

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