Dolly Parton was just 18 when she arrived in Nashville with dreams of stardom — and, on her very first day in the city, crossed paths with the man who would become her husband. She was outside the Wishy Washy launderette when Carl Dean, three years older, drove up in his pickup truck.
Two years later, the pair were married, just as Parton was beginning the climb toward the fame and fortune she would later capture so vividly in her music.
Her songs carried the full sweep of her life: the crushing poverty of her childhood in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, the weary grind of working nine to five, and the anguish inspired by a woman with “flaming locks of auburn hair” who threatened to take Dean away.
Parton, whose death at 80 following a battle with cancer was announced on Tuesday, seemed in many ways to have lived a story drawn from the pages of a country music songbook.
Dean died in March last year, prompting Parton to honor “the love we shared for over 60 years.” She had once described them as two “old mountain goats” who would “be together till one of us dies.” In the end, they were — though Parton survived him by only 18 months.
It may be easy to suggest that Parton never fully recovered from losing the husband who had been her anchor for decades. He was, after all, the steady presence in a life often marked by turbulence. But away from the spotlight, the reality was more layered than that.
Dolly Parton, whose death at 80 was announced on Tuesday, appeared to live a life shaped like a classic country music tale
Dolly Parton, pictured in 1965, was 18 when she arrived in Nashville determined to become a star
She and Carl Dean, three years her senior, wed as Parton was on the path to fame and fortune
It is tempting to say that, since Parton died so soon after her beloved husband’s death, she never really recovered from the loss
Dean’s death undeniably hit Parton hard.
‘She’s definitely been going downhill since Carl died earlier this year,’ a source told Our News Outlet. ‘They were married for almost 60 years. His death took a huge toll on her.’
She was publicly devoted to the shy businessman, who owned a local asphalt firm and was rarely seen at her side – but the relationship was far from simple.
Parton, the fourth of 12 children, wanted to be a mother herself, but a partial hysterectomy prevented the couple from becoming parents.
And in the early 1980s, she cheated on Dean, describing in her 2017 memoir a secret ‘affair of the heart.’
She never named the man, but she left enough clues to point to her band leader, Gregg Perry.
The end of their relationship was so devastating, she wrote, it ‘just about killed me.’
Indeed, Parton described finding a gun in her bedside table and considering suicide.
‘I don’t think I’d have done it, killed myself, but I can’t say for sure,’ she wrote. ‘Now that I’ve gone through that terrible moment, I can certainly understand the possibilities even for someone solid like me if the pain gets bad enough.’
She was romantically linked to Burt Reynolds – her co-star in the 1982 film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas – but denied it, jokily replying when asked: ‘Shoot, no! Burt and I are too much alike to be involved. We both wear wigs and high heels, and we both have a roll around the middle.’ He was reportedly furious at the line.
She, however, insisted repeat rumors of infidelity were standard in showbusiness.
‘I’ve been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with,’ she told ABC News in 2012. ‘Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have. But you know people are always saying that.’
A source told Our News Outlet: ‘Dolly always seemed happy and laughed at any rumors, she thought the false reports were silly.’
‘She’s definitely been going downhill since Carl died earlier this year,’ a source told Our News Outlet
In the early 1980s, Parton cheated on Dean, describing in her 2017 memoir a secret ‘affair of the heart’
She was romantically linked to Burt Reynolds – her co-star in the 1982 film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas – but denied it
‘I’ve been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with,’ she said in 2012
Yet Parton provided conflicting accounts of her situation, insisting one minute that she would kill her husband if she ever caught him cheating, and the next confirming they had an open marriage. Open, she said, merely in the sense of flirting.
‘Yes, it’s an open relationship, but not sexually and I would kill him if I thought he was doing that,’ she said. ‘He would shoot me too. At the end of the day, we love each other madly.’
The song Jolene, she said, was written due to her intense jealousy over a red-haired bank clerk who was flirting with Dean.
‘She got this terrible crush on my husband,’ Parton told NPR in 2008. ‘And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. 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.’
The jealousy, heartbreak and rivalry might be all part and parcel of her country music world, but there were other rumors perhaps too controversial for Nashville to note.
Parton always denied that she had for decades been in a secret lesbian relationship with her assistant and childhood friend, Judy Ogle, insisting on Nightline in 2012: ‘I’m not gay. If I was gay, I would have come out of the closet just a-flying.’
The rumors persisted, however, fueled by her husband’s reticence and by Parton’s admitting that she and Ogle regularly shared a bed.
‘Judy, my friend, they just think that you just can’t be that close to somebody,’ said Parton on Nightline. ‘Judy and I have been best friends since we were like in the third and fourth grade.
‘We still just have a great friendship and relationship and I love her as much as I love anybody in the whole world, but we’re not romantically involved.’
Certainly, she was unabashed in her support for gay rights and became an icon in the LGBTQ community for her activism.
The song Jolene, she said, was written due to her intense jealousy over a red-haired bank clerk who was flirting with Dean
Parton always denied that she had for decades been in a secret lesbian relationship with her assistant and childhood friend, Judy Ogle
Parton was unabashed in her support for gay rights and became an icon in the LGBTQ community for her activism
Parton, the fourth of 12 children, wanted to be a mother herself, but a partial hysterectomy prevented the couple from becoming parents
She wrote a song for the 2005 film TransAmerica, starring Felicity Huffman as a transgender woman, and spoke out against the controversial 2016 North Carolina bathroom bill dictating that people could only use restrooms matching their sex at birth.
‘I don’t want to be controversial or stir up a bunch of trouble, but people are going to love who they are going to love,’ she said in 2014. ‘I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals. Ha ha ha!’
And in 2023, she condemned laws in her home state of Tennessee that legalized discrimination against trans people.
‘I just want everybody to be treated good,’ she told the Hollywood Reporter. ‘I try not to get into the politics of everything. I try to get into the human element of it.
‘I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts – all within my own family.
‘I know and love them all, and I do not judge.’
