Dolly Parton Announces Tragic Loss

Iconic country singer Dolly Parton has suffered another tragic family loss, she announced Monday.

The acclaimed musician lost her husband and soulmate of 60 years, Carl Dean, according to a statement released by her publicist. He died in Nashville while they were together, and their final moments were as private as the life Dean lived behind the scenes where Parton sought to keep him.

“Carl Dean, husband of Dolly Parton, passed away March 3rd in Nashville at the age of 82,” said the statement. “He will be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family attending. He was survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie.”

Parton added in her own words, “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy,” according to ABC News.

She rarely gave fans a glimpse into her private life with Dean, and the couple did not have any children.

“It is important to have someone there in your corner and you know they’ll love you for just who you are,” Parton told E! News in May 2024. “There’s a great comfort in knowing that someone loves you exactly for who you are — because he fell in love with me before I became a star.”

The “Yellow Roses” singer met Dean at a laundromat when she was 18, sparking a passionate relationship that helped propel her to stardom at a youthful age. They married two years later but never had children, a decision that Parton recently explained afforded her the freedom to pursue her music.

“Since I had no kids, and my husband was pretty independent, I had freedom,” she told Oprah Winfrey during a November 2020 episode of her Apple TV+ show “The Oprah Conversation.”

“So I think a big part of my whole success is the fact that I was free to work,” she explained.

The 11-time Grammy Award winner told Winfrey, “I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done. I wouldn’t be in a position to do all of the things I’m doing now.”

Still, Parton believed Dean would have been a wonderful dad and revealed they even had a name picked out for a future daughter in the event that they were blessed with one.

“My husband and I, when we first got married, we thought about if we had kids, ‘What would they look like? Would they be tall because he’s tall? Or would they be little squats like me?’ If we’d had a girl, she was gonna be called Carla,” Parton shared. “Anyway, we talked about it, and we dreamed it, but it wasn’t meant to be. Now that we’re older? We’re glad,” she added.

The “Jolene” singer predicted she “would’ve been a great mother,” according to the NY Post.

Dean, who laid asphalt for most of his career, rarely gave interviews except on rare occasions, like when he spoke with Entertainment Weekly in 2016 about his decision to get hitched to Parton.

“My first thought was, ‘I’m gonna marry that girl.’ My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good looking.’ And that was the day my life began,” he said of meeting Parton. “I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”

Dean’s death is the second family tragedy to beset Parton in less than six months. In November, David Wilburn Parton, her brother, died at 82.