Dolly Parton releases musical tribute to late husband Carl Dean
'I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old. We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together'
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Dolly Parton has released a musical tribute to her late husband Carl Dean.
Dean, Parton’s partner of nearly 60 years, died earlier this week at the age of 82 the country star announced in a social media post.
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“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,” Parton wrote in a statement shared to X and Instagram.
No cause of death was announced, but her message noted that Dean died in Nashville, where the couple resided.
Following the news, Parton has now dedicated her new track, If You Hadn’t Been There, to Dean. She announced the song in an Instagram post Friday, which included a throwback photo of Dean giving Parton a piggyback ride.
“I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old. We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together. Like all great love stories, they never end,” the 11-time Grammy winner wrote. “They live on in memory and song. He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him.”
Parton’s song begins with the lyrics, “If you hadn’t been there / Where would I be? / Without your trust, love and belief.”
Elsewhere in the song, she thanks Dean for “pushing me on.”
“The ups and downs / We’ve always shared / And I wouldn’t be here, if you hadn’t been there,” she sings.
The sweeping ballad ends with her repeating the lines, ““I wouldn’t be here/ If you hadn’t been there.”
According to the Associated Press, Dean was a businessman, who owned an asphalt-paving business in Nashville.
The two — who never had children — met outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville as an aspiring singer when she was 18 years old.
“I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” Parton, 79, said of their first meeting in 1964, according to a post on her website to celebrate the couple’s 50th anniversary. “He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”
“I’d come to Nashville with dirty clothes,” she told The New York Times in 1976. “I was in such a hurry to get here. And after I’d put my clothes in the machine, I started walkin’ down the street, just lookin’ at my new home, and this guy hollered at me, and I waved. Bein’ from the country, I spoke to everybody. And he came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband.”
The pair were married in 1966 and for many years, Dean famously eschewed the spotlight. He rarely attended public events, telling his wife that he preferred to maintain his privacy.
But despite his reluctance to be seen in public, Parton told Knox News in 2024. that Dean was instrumental to her success as a musical artist.
“There’s always that safety, that security, that strength,” she said of their relationship. “He’s a good man, and we’ve had a good life and he’s been a good husband.”
Even though Parton would occasionally share throwback photos of the loved-up pair in their younger days, their marriage was shrouded in mystery. So much so that some of Parton’s fans questioned whether Dean truly existed.
“A lot of people say there’s no Carl Dean, that he’s just somebody I made up to keep other people off me,” she told the Associated Press in 1984. Parton joked that she sometimes wished he would appear with her in a photo shoot, “So that people could at least know that I’m not married to a wart or something.”
On Thursday, Parton thanked fans for the outpouring of support she has received since Dean’s death was announced.
“I can’t reach out personally to each of you but just know it has meant the world to me,” the musician said. “He is in God’s arms now and I am okay with that. I will always love you.”
When the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2016, Dean opened up to Entertainment Tonight about their first meeting.
“My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl. My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’ And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”
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