Carl Dean, Dolly Parton’s husband, has been nearly 60 years old, died at the age of 82

Carl Dean, an asphalt paver, met his future wife, Dolly Parton, who quietly supported her as she rose to superstar more than sixty years ago in Nashville’s laundry and died Monday. He is 82 years old.

Ms. Parton announced his death in a statement shared on social media. No reason.

Although his wife is a world-renowned star, Mr. Dean is a private man who keeps a low profile. Ms. Parton said in an interview with Entertainment in 2020 that her husband never wanted to be the spotlight.

“It’s not who he is,” Ms. Parton said. “He’s like a quiet, reserved guy, and he wonders if he’s ever been there and he’ll never get a minute of peace, and he’s right about that.”

According to Ms. Parton’s website, Mr. Dean was born in Virginia Bates Dean and is known as Ginny and Edgar Henry Dean. He lived in East Ridge, Tennessee as a kid, Ms. Parton told the local news channel in Chattanooga, Tennessee that Ms. Parton became a country star and pursued a quiet life with an asphalt paving business.

According to Ms. Parton’s website, the couple met outside the Wishywashy laundry on the day she moved to Nashville in 1964, when Ms. Parton was 18 and Mr. Dean was 21. Two years later, in 1966, married on Memorial Day in Ringgold, Georgia, only Ms. Parton’s mother, a missionary and his wife, his wife and his wife.

Ms. Parton and Mr. Dean have lived on a farm outside Nashville for decades.

In an interview with National Public Radio in 2008, she said Ms. Parton’s 1973 hit song “Joline” was inspired by a bank teller who was interested in her husband early in her marriage.

“He just likes going to the bank because she gives him a lot of attention,” Ms. Parton said in the interview. “It’s kind of like a joke between us–when I said, ‘Hell, you spend a lot of time in the bank. I don’t believe we have that money. So it’s really an innocent song, but it sounds like a terrible song.”

Ms. Parton said her long-term husband inspired several other songs.

Early in her career, the song “Just Because I’m a Woman” describes the disappointment of a man who married a “angel” he thought was, but was more complicated to learn that she was.

Ms. Parton said in a podcast interview in 2023 that about eight months after getting married, Mr. Dean “started asking me questions about my past and I said, ‘Now, I don’t want to lie to you because I’m a very open, honest person, so don’t ask me what I don’t want the truth.’ Anyway, I told the truth, he wasn’t too happy about it, and then I wrote that song. ”

Her 2012 love ballad “From Here to the Moon and Back” was also inspired by Mr. Dean, who told ABC News that her 2023 album “Rockstar” was influenced by his love of rock music.

“From the moment I met him in 1964, he started to explode. That was his music,” she told ABC.

Ms. Parton inspired her album “Pure & Simple” in 2016, and the couple celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2016.

Mr. Dean usually does not conduct interviews. Mr. Dean rarely goes into the spotlight, so that at some point there are rumors that the two are not actually married, and Ms. Parton always eliminates it.

“They think I just made up for him,” Ms. Parton said in a 2024 TV interview.

In the same interview, Ms. Parton tells the story of joining Mr. Dean at her first awards dinner, who was in the competition but was “absolutely painful”.

After that, “we got in the car and he said, ‘You know what, I hope you do well.” She smiled and said she no longer asked him to attend her events.

Ms. Parton was asked about having a child in interviews over the years. She said the couple spoke and “dreamed” after their first marriage. “Are we old now? We’re so happy.”

Ms. Parton said Mr. Dean was one of the stable forces in Ms. Parton’s life.

“God is very good to me,” she said. “He gave me Carl Dean. That’s the perfect man I need.”