A look inside Dolly Parton’s 57-year ‘open’ marriage to Carl Thomas Dean as the country legend opens up about her personal life in tell-all documentary
They met in 1964 at a laundromat in Nashville, and through the dizzying heights of fame, there has always been one constant for Dolly Parton: her husband Carl Dean.
The couple has been married for 57 years after tying the knot in 1966, two years after they first met.
Before she rose to the top of the charts with hits like Jolene and 9 to 5, Dolly, 77, met Carl, 81, and he’s been by her side ever since.
In her new Channel 5 documentary, Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words, the singer opened up about how they first met.
“When I first moved to Nashville in 1964, I was doing dirty laundry because I was in such a hurry to move to Nashville from my home in East Tennessee, which was 200 miles away.
Dolly Parton, 77, and her husband Carl Dean, 81, have been married for 57 years after tying the knot in 1966, two years after they met
Before rising to the top of the charts with hits like Jolene and 9 to 5, Dolly, 77, met Carl outside a laundromat in 1964 (pictured at their 1964 wedding)
‘I’d never been to a laundrette before. I walked outside and there was a handsome man driving past the lame laundromat. And he stepped aside.
“So we started talking and two years later we got married and we’ve been married for 32 years now.”
Dolly previously admitted in her 2017 book Dolly on Dolly, Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton that “men are my weakness.”
She said: ‘Men are my weakness. Short, fat, bald or skinny – I’ve been in love with some very unusual men, but Carl knows I’ll always come home and I don’t have sex with these people – I just flirt and have fun.
‘He’s not jealous and I’m not jealous of him. He knows I flirt. He flirts too.’
She added: “Yes it is an open relationship but not sexual and I would kill him if I thought he did that.
‘He would shoot me too. At the end of the day, we love each other dearly.”
Speaking on Zoe Ball’s BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show last month, Dolly was clear about why her marriage to Carl has lasted.
‘We’ve been together 59 [years]”We were together for two years, and then we celebrated our 57th anniversary on May 30,” she told Zoe.
‘I’d never been to a laundrette before. I walked outside and there was a handsome man driving past the lame laundromat. And he stepped aside.
Dolly has previously said that she and her husband have an open relationship, but not sexually
‘But I think that’s mainly down to the fact that we’re honest and open and have a twisted sense of humour!’
“He’s crazy, he’s so funny and smart. And I have a great sense of humor from both sides of my family, so I think the humor has always been good.”
She went on to say that mutual “love and respect” for each other has always been the foundation of their romance.
“There’s the respect and the love and I just like him!”
“You know, I would have liked him if he wasn’t my husband, if he was someone else’s husband, I say, ‘You know that Carl Dean, isn’t he funny? Isn’t he a good guy?’, so I think it’s just mutual respect and we just like each other.’
In 2022, Dolly shared an insight into their romance when she explained that she likes to ‘dress up’ for her man
She told E! News: ‘Every day I put on some makeup and fix my hair because I think, ‘Well, the whole world, I’m here and everyone sees me all dressed up, and I’m not just going to go home and just flop on it”.
‘No one wants to kiss a loser! It’s important to me that I look as good as possible. I think it keeps things a little spicy.”
Despite never having sexual relations with another man during her marriage, Dolly confessed in her book that she had experienced an “affair of the heart.”
She explained that she was left “heartbroken” by an unknown lover, but admitted it was solely an emotional affair.
‘No one wants to kiss a loser! It’s important to me that I look as good as possible. I think it keeps things a little spicy,” Dolly explained that dressing up is the secret to her long marriages
Despite never having sexual relations with another man during her marriage, Dolly admitted in her book that she had experienced an “affair of the heart” but said it was only an emotional affair.
Carl, who used to run a road construction company in Nashville, has always stayed out of the spotlight and the couple is rarely seen together.
Carl, who used to run a road construction company in Nashville, has always stayed out of the spotlight and the couple is rarely seen together.
While Dolly jokes that he’s only seen her perform once, she told Entertainment Tonight about a sweet conversation she had with her husband.
“He said, ‘I didn’t choose this world, I chose you, and you chose that world. But we can keep our lives separate and together.” And we do that too.’
In 2011, Dolly told the Toronto Sun, “We are really proud of our marriage. It’s the first for both of us. And the last.’
Although the couple never had children, the musician insisted she “hasn’t missed” having children.
She admitted that her career would have been put on the back burner if she had started a family, and that little ones were not a “burning” desire for her.
She said Saga Magazine: ‘I didn’t miss it like I thought. When you’re a young couple you think you’re going to have kids, but for me it just wasn’t that burning thing. I had my career and my music and I was traveling.
‘If I had children, I would have stayed home with them. I’m sure, and I was worried sick about them.
‘With everything going on, I would hate to bring a child into this world right now!
“I always say that God didn’t let me have children so that all the children could be mine.”
Dolly Parton: In Her Own Words airs on December 29 at 9pm on Channel 5 and My5.