3amCelebrity NewsDolly PartonAssociate Editor Tom Bryant reflects on his many meetings with Dolly Parton - and how her love for husband Carl Dean never dimmed20:51, 25 Aug 2026Updated 21:00, 25 Aug 2026I’ll never forget the sparkle in Dolly’s eyes every time she talked about her husband Carl Dean. I’ve interviewed the country legend several times - and his name, and her love for him, always cropped up.‌"Come springtime in Tennessee, we have buttercups coming up around the side of the barn and last week he brought me a little mason jar full of them and wrote me a little poem,” she told me a few years ago.‌I know that his death last year left her totally bereft. They had been married for nearly 60 years and were more in love than ever. With this in mind, I wasn’t surprised that when announcing her death today, her nephew Brian Seaver was quick to say how the two of them will be reunited once more.‌"Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus, surely met by Carl," he said. A deeply religious woman who got up at 3am every morning to pray, she took great comfort in the fact that Carl was waiting for her.As a pal told me tonight : “Amid all the heartache and upset that she has gone, we are all comforted by the fact she is with Carl again.”‌The pair met outside Nashville's Wishy-Washy laundromat when she was just 18. Carl, 21, struck up conversation by saying she was going to get sunburn in her revealing outfit."My first thought was, 'I'm going to marry that girl,'" Carl once said. "My second was, 'Lord she's good lookin'."They began dating and Dolly signed with Monument Records soon after. Two years after they first met they tied the knot in a low-key ceremony in Georgia in 1966.Article continues belowBut fame never sat easily on Carl's shoulders. Despite being the subject of red-headed bank clerk Jolene's advances in Dolly's famous 1973 song, he has quietly lived on their sprawling farm running his paving firm until he retired recently.Despite being linked to other men -including Burt Reynolds -she often told me how Carl was never concerned, and even found it vaguely amusing."Sometimes he goes to the grocery store and he sees a magazine with some story about me and he'll get it and bring it home and say, 'I see you're having Burt Reynolds's baby again'," she told me once as she roared with laughter. I’ll never forget her love for him….or that laugh.Choose Daily Mirror as a 'Preferred Source' on Google News for quick access to the news you value.‌Burt ReynoldsDolly Parton