They say opposites attract, and that certainly seemed to be true of country music icon Dolly Parton, known for her dazzling, bedazzled style, and her husband Carl Dean. Parton – the singer of such hit songs as “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” – has died aged 80 after “bravely facing a brief battle with cancer”, her nephew announced on Tuesday (25 August). Her death follows a year and a half on from that of her husband, Dean, who died in March 2025, aged 82. “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together,” said Parton at the time. “Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years.” Their love story is one for the books, though they kept much of it out of the spotlight – save for the several songs Parton wrote with Dean in mind, including her multimillion-selling 1973 hit “Jolene”. The pair met outside the Wishy Washy laundromat the day Parton moved to Nashville at 18. Dean was 21 at the time. “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me),” she said of their first 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 in 1966 at a tiny ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia with only Parton’s mother in attendance alongside a preacher and his wife. They set up their life on a farm in Nashville where they lived for decades. Dolly Parton pictured with her husband Carl Dean (Instagram/Dolly Parton)It was a year after they married that Parton scored her first Top 40 hit with her song “Dumb Blonde”. From there, superstardom followed with her musical career soaring to stratospheric heights over the next decade. All the while Dean continued to support his wife from the sidelines as he continued working at his asphalt-paving business in Nashville. “Carl has never been in the limelight and never wanted to be in it,” Parton said in 2023. “He don’t like it.” Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon MusicSign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply.Try for freeADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.Parton recalled bringing Dean to his first and last awards dinner in the early days of their marriage. “He came out there taking off his tuxedo, his tie, and all that, and said, ‘Don't ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain’t going,’” said the singer. "I never asked him and he never did." So averse to the spotlight was Dean that his near-total absence from red carpets and celebrity life led some fans to believe he didn’t exist. “They think I just made him up,” Parton joked in a television interview in 2024.Although Dean preferred to stay out of the spotlight, his influence on Parton’s music and career are undeniable. Parton wrote her 1973 heartbreak ballad “Jolene” about a bank teller who had a crush on her husband, she revealed in an interview with NPR in 2008. Carl Dean and Dolly Parton pictured at their wedding in 1966 (Facebook)“He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention,” she said. “It was kind of like a running joke between us – when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”Dean was also the inspiration behind her love ballad “From Here to the Moon and Back” and “Just Because I’m a Woman”, a track about the disappointment felt by a man who learns the woman he married is not the “angel” he believed her to be. Parton recalled that eight months into their own marriage, Dean began asking questions about her past. “I said, ‘Now, I don’t want to lie to you because I’m a pretty open, honest person, so don’t ask me nothing you don’t want the truth about.’ Anyway, I told the truth and he wasn’t too happy about that, and then I wrote that song,” said the singer. More recently, Dean’s love of rock and roll music inspired her 2023 album Rockstar, her 30-track record containing a mix of new music and classic rock covers, including of his favourite band Led Zeppelin. “From the time I met him in 1964 – he just had rock ’n’ roll blasting. That’s his music,” she told ABC. The singer also noted that Dean did not mince his words when it came to feedback on her music. “He’s very honest,” she said. “We have such a great relationship. I know not to ask him if I don’t want an honest answer.” Dolly Parton in a rare photograph with husband Carl Dean (Instagram/@DollyParton)Parton was often asked in interviews about her and Dean’s decision not to have children. Speaking to The Guardian in 2014, she said they had talked and “dreamed about it” when they first got married, but noted that it wasn’t meant to be. “Now that we’re older? We’re glad.” Parton added: “I would have been a great mother, I think. I would probably have given up everything else because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work or tour].” “Everything would have changed,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”As early as 1980, Parton told a reporter at the premiere of her film 9 to 5 that she was not sure she wanted children. A few years later, at age 38, she underwent a partial hysterectomy after being diagnosed with endometriosis and was therefore no longer able to get pregnant. In a 1987 interview with Gloria Steinem, Parton addressed her fertility struggles, stating: “I can’t have children physically. I love children. I don’t know that it also wasn’t God’s will, you know, for me not to have kids. “I mean, I try to look at things in a way that I can put them in a proper place because somebody has to be out there doing something to entertain other people’s children.” ‘God has been good to me. He gave me Carl Dean,’ said Dolly Parton about her husband (Instagram/Dolly Parton)Despite the fertility problems, her and Dean’s relationship flourished over the years, and he proved to be a stabilising force for the singer amid all the fame. “God has been good to me,” she told The Guardian. “He gave me Carl Dean. And that was the perfect man that I needed.” She also name-checked her best friend Judy Ogle as her other “rock” in life. Parton said she and Dean never regretted not having kids. “The older we get, the gladder we are that we don’t have them now, because we take care of a lot of other people’s kids,” she told Rolling Stone in 2003. “We buy new cars for all the nieces and nephews that graduate, we send any to college that want to go.”The country music star looked after children in other ways too. In 1992, Parton made a promise to every seventh and eighth-grade student in the Tennessee county where she grew up to personally give them $500 each if they graduated high school. Sevier County’s high school dropout rate dropped from 35 per cent to just six per cent. Carl Dean died in March 2025 (Instagram/Dolly Parton)In the wake of her death, Parton’s family has encouraged fans to honour her legacy by donating to the singer’s Imagination Library, her charity that sends children around the world a free book every month from birth until they turn five. “I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine,” she told Oprah Winfrey in 2020. Parton’s death was announced by her nephew Brian Seaver on Instagram. “I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it until now,” he said. “It is an honour, an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness.”