Dolly Parton Wouldn’t Let Her Manager Into Her Nashville Home

Dolly Parton and her manager were close, but not so close that she let him visit her Nashville home. Parton has owned several homes in Nashville but is surprisingly unwilling to let many people visit. At Gallin’s teasing, Parton explained why she barred him from visiting her sprawling home.

The ‘9 to 5’ singer and her manager Sandy Gallin were very close

In the late 1970s, Parton hired Gallin to be her manager. While he helped her take her career to new heights with film roles, the pair also became instant friends. 

“I love Sandy,” she said in 1981, per the book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters With Dolly Parton. “We become closer all the time. He was just a God-given person to me. When you know something’s right, it never goes wrong. When I feel that confident about a person, it can only get bigger and better. He’s amazing. When I’m around people that I feel are psychic or spiritual, like Sandy, it just seems to make life real special. He’s a true friend of mine. I have told him things that I ain’t told anybody. That’s just the way I am with Sandy.”

As with many of the men in Parton’s life, there were rumors that the two were romantically involved. She explained that there was no truth to this.

“He was gay, and that’s how we could get away with doing so many things together,” Parton wrote in her book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “Nobody was threatened by that. I was in no danger of him coming on to me. We could go anywhere and have fun doing it.”

Dolly Parton wouldn’t let her manager into her Nashville home

In the late 1970s, Parton and Gallin shared an apartment that overlooked New York’s Central Park. They only stayed there a few days out of the month to conduct business and work on music. 

“We wanted a really comfortable place for people in the music business and, like, they didn’t feel like they were coming into an office,” Gallin told The New York Times in 1979.

Though she was willing to share an apartment with Gallin, she didn’t want him stepping foot in her large Nashville home.

“She won’t even let me come to her house in Nashville,” Gallin explained.

“You got no business in my house,” Parton responded. She reportedly only let a select few into the home that she shared with her husband, Carl Thomas Dean.

“I scouted all over Tennessee for a piece of land with hills in front and a stream around it. It’s got a bitty bridge, and I made sure it’s just narrow enough so’s no tour bus can git over it. Carl and me can walk around stark naked there and nobody’d see. We have chickens and cows and a vegetable garden. It’s a quiet, homey place for me and the special people in my life.”

Dolly Parton wants to make sure fans don’t visit her home either

If Gallin couldn’t score an invite to her home, Parton’s fans certainly won’t. Her husband made certain of that. As Dean is secretive, fans approaching the property typically didn’t know that he was Parton’s husband. 

Assuming he was a groundskeeper, fans would approach Dean with questions, and he’d tell them that they had the wrong house. This helped the couple maintain a little bit of privacy on their property.