Dolly Parton's husband dies at age 82
Dolly Parton's husband, Carl Dean, has died at the age of 82.
Dean was notoriously private during their almost 60 years of marriage, after he tied the knot with the country music icon in 1966.
Parton announced the sad news of her loss in a statement on her Instagram, saying "words can't do justice" to the "love [they] shared for over 60 years".
"Carl Dean, husband of Dolly Parton, passed away March 3rd in Nashville at the age of 82," the statement read.
"He will be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family attending. He was survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie."
"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 said in the statement.
The statement concluded sharing that, "the family has asked for privacy during this difficult time".
Parton met Dean outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville at 18.
“I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me)," Parton described the meeting.
"He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”
They married two years later, on Memorial Day, May 30th 1966, in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia.
He later inspired Parton’s classic, “Jolene”, as Parton told NPR in 2008 that she wrote the song about a flirty a bank teller who seemed to take an interest in Dean.
Parton and Dean kept strict privacy around their relationship for decades, Parton telling The Associated Press in 1984: “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 joked that she’d like to pose with him on the cover of a magazine, “So that people could at least know that I’m not married to a wart or something."
Image credits: Instagram/Jason Moore/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock