Dolly Parton Said She and Her Husband Were Always ‘Anxious’ to Get Away From Each Other

Dolly Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, were married for just short of 60 years. They wed in the earliest days of her career and remained together until his death this year. Parton’s work took her away from home for long stretches at a time, but she said this was never a problem for her marriage. She said they both got antsy when they spent too much time together.

Dolly Parton said she and her husband didn’t like spending too much time together

Parton has toured, recorded albums, filmed movies, and hosted television shows. All of this work meant she was hardly home. This wasn’t a problem for her marriage, though. She said that even spending a handful of weeks together became too much.

“We’re so used to the lifestyle, if I’m home two or three weeks, I want to get to work and he wants to get back to work, so he’s just as anxious to see me go as I am to leave,” she told Playboy in 1978, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “It probably don’t make much sense, but it makes sense to us.”

She said that when she was home, she liked quiet time with Dean. While they were both independent people, they loved each other deeply.

“He knows he is just a part of my life, just like I am part of his. I guess we really both have two first loves, our job and each other. We have a great understanding,” she said in the book Dolly by Alanna Nash. “And I believed it could happen. I thought you were supposed to be happy when you married, and I am. It’s a good marriage. It’s solid, and it’s firm.”

Dolly Parton warned her husband their marriage wouldn’t be like other peoples’

Part of the reason their marriage worked so well was because Parton and Dean understood what it would be like. She warned him before their wedding that their marriage wouldn’t be what other people had.

“I said, ‘It may be hard for you to visualize all of this now, but we won’t have the kind of marriage other people have because my music is going to take me away from home a lot, and the bigger I get the more demands will be made on my time.’ Any other man would probably have thought I was crazy — a kid from the hills talking about all these big plans as though they had already happened — but Carl accepted it.”

Dean wanted nothing to do with the spotlight, but he always supported Parton’s ambition.

She spoke about what she misses the most about him

Dean died in March 2025. She said that while she has found some measure of peace, she is still struggling with the loss.

“I just try to go on, because I know I have to,” she told the Associated Press. “And he was ill for quite a while, and part of me was at peace that he was at peace and not suffering anymore. But that still doesn’t make up for the loss and the loneliness of it.”

She has turned to her faith to support her.

“I am a person of faith, and I truly believe that I’m going to see him again someday,” she said. “And I see him every day in my memories and in my heart, and in all the things that we used to do and all the things that we’ve built together.”