Country music legend Dolly Parton has been married to her husband Carl Dean for 54 years, a lengthy union the likes of which is rare in the entertainment world.
Though Parton and Dean have been together for decades, they are rarely seen together in public, as they have always preferred to keep their relationship private. In fact, Parton revealed in her new book “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics” that they have kept their relationship so private that some people question whether Dean even really exists!
Parton addressed these rumors head-on in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight [1].
“A lot of people have thought that through the years, because he does not want to be in the spotlight at all,” explained the 74 year-old icon. “It’s just not who he is. He’s like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace and he’s right about that.”
“I’ve always respected and appreciated that in him and I’ve always tried to keep him out of the limelight as much as I can,” Parton continued. “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 and we have. We’ve been together 56 years, married 54.”
Parton and Dean married on May 30, 1966, in a ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia.
“Our joke about the fact, when people ask me why it’s lasted this long, I say, ‘Because I stay gone.’ And there’s a lot of truth in that — the fact that we’re not in each other’s faces all the time,” she shared. “But we do have a great respect and admiration for each other. We both have a great sense of humor. So, we have a lot of fun.”
When they are together, Parton said, “We have very similar tastes… we love to travel around our little RV, and we don’t like parties and all that stuff.”
As for why she decided to write her new memoir now, Parton said that she was simply bored in quarantine amidst the coronavirus pandemic, so she just began writing.
“I had to have something to do,” Parton said. “Couldn’t get out in concert. Had to make a living somehow.”
“I let people have a glimpse into a lot of old photos, and my growing up in the business, a lot of family photos, and some of my early days as well,” Parton said of the book. “Even for my true fans, I think they’re gonna get a lot of new stuff that they’ll enjoy when they thought they knew everything about me. They’ll find a few little nuggets that they didn’t know.”
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com [2] and is used by permission.
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