Dolly Parton Makes First Public Appearance Since Death of Husband Carl Dean - E! Online

Dolly Parton made her first public appearance since confirming husband Carl Dean’s death earlier this month while celebrating the 40th season of her Dollywood theme park.

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Watch : Dolly Parton Shares Loving Message to Husband Carl Thomas Dean After His Death

Dolly Parton is still working her 9 to 5 amid her grief.

Nearly two weeks after announcing the death of her husband Carl Dean March 3, the “I Will Always Love You” singer attended the March 14 launch of her Dollywood theme park’s 40th season celebration. 

At the event, her first public appearance since his death, Dolly donned a tasseled pink dress and her signature blonde hair and performed music for the audience in attendance. She also shared her gratitude for their support of her dreams.

“Thank you to our guests and the community for the support they’ve given to my Dollywood for 40 years,” she said at the event, per a March 14 statement from the organization. “It’s hard to believe it has been that long, but it never would have lasted if it hadn’t been for you—our guests.”

She added, “It doesn’t matter what your dream is—even if it’s opening a theme park with your name on it—follow those dreams and never give up!”

While Dolly shared her gratitude to her supporters in person, she had also extended her thanks to fans on social media who sent her well wishes following the news of Carl’s death. 

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Dolly Parton Releases Moving New Song Dedicated to Husband Carl Dean After His Death

“Thank you for all the messages, cards and flowers that you’ve sent to pay your respects for the loss of my beloved husband Carl,” she wrote in a March 6 Instagram post. “He is in God’s arms now and I am okay with that.”

The 79-year-old added a personal message to her husband of nearly 60 years, which fittingly read, “I will always love you.”

Dolly also honored her love story with Carl—who famously avoided the spotlight after not enjoying a 1967 event he attended with his wife—by releasing a song dedicated to him called “If You Hadn’t Been There” days after his passing. 

Curtis Hilbun / Dollywood

“Carl and I fell in love when I was 18 and he was 23, and like all great love stories, they never end,” she wrote on Instagram March 7. “They live in memory and in song, and I dedicate this to him.”

In the heartbreaking and touching tribute, Dolly sings, “I wouldn’t be here / If you hadn’t been there / Holding my hand / Showing you care / You made me dream / More than I dared / And I wouldn’t be here / If you hadn’t been there.”

Read on to look back at Dolly and Carl’s timeless love story. 

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New Girl in Town

Dolly Parton left two boyfriends behind in her hometown of Sevierville, Tenn., so getting into a new relationship was the last thing on her mind when she moved to Nashville in 1964, right after graduating from high school.

Alas, she met Carl Dean while walking down the street on her way to the laundromat the day she arrived in Music City.

As remembered by Parton (Dean—who died March 3, 2025, at the age of 82—never spoke to the press), he was driving by in a white Chevrolet when he called out, "You're gonna get sunburnt out here, little lady!"

Dolly Parton/Instagram

They got to talking "and I fell for him, and he fell for me," she wrote in her 2020 book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. In another interview, the 5-foot artist, who was 18 when they met, recalled how tan Dean was as he towered over her at 6-foot-2. (The 22-year-old had an asphalt paving business with his father, so was bronzed from working outside.)

She did not, however, hop right into his car. "You gotta know somebody or they may take you on a back road and kill you," she pointed out, per Stephen Miller's 2011 biography, Smart Blonde. Parton did invite Dean to visit her at her aunt and uncle's house the next day, which he did, though she would only sit with him outside. He came back every day for a week and when he took her out for their first date, he drove her to his parents' house first because, Parton said, "he said he knew right from the minute he saw me that that's the one he wanted."

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Artist of Many Talents

But as she started to make a name for herself as a songwriter, collaborating frequently with her uncle Bill Owens, her boss at Combine Music, Fred Foster, warned it would be a bad idea for her to get married, as she was on the verge of getting her big break as a singer.

Instead, she and Dean—who'd been planning a big wedding—didn't put off getting married another day, eloping to Ringgold, Ga., and tying the knot May 30, 1966, with only mother-of-the-bride Avie Lee Parton by their side (and serving as their wedding photographer).

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

They kept it so quiet, Foster didn't even know they were husband and wife for a year, until one day the label exec—pointing to Parton's growing success—cracked, "Now aren't you glad you didn't get married?" 

The "Jolene" singer has explained that, while her passport says Dolly Parton Dean, she didn't change her name professionally because she already had a record deal with her maiden name.

"Anyway, if I had chosen the name Dolly Dean," she cracked to The Guardian in 2014, "I'd have been Double D. Again!"

Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Parton did bring her spouse to one big event, the BMI Awards banquet in 1966, where she and Owens were being honored in the country category for writing "Put It Off Until Tomorrow."

Afterward, Dean started pulling off his tuxedo before they'd even reached the car. "He said, 'I'm happy for you,'" Parton wrote in her book. "'I want you to do what you want to do. But don't ever ask me to go to another one of them damn things, because I ain't going.' And he never has."

That was the first of 48 BMI Awards she has received, to go with the 10 Grammys (not including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011), nine Country Music Association Awards, 13 Academy of Country Music Awards and a host of other accolades.

But the real prize was always waiting for Parton at home.  

Chris Walter/WireImage

Making It Work

"I always joke and laugh when people ask me what's the key to my long marriage and lasting love," the 9 to 5 star told People in 2018. "I always say 'Stay gone!' and there's a lot of truth to that. I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we're together and the little things we do."

One of their earliest dinner dates was at the McDonald's drive-thru window in Dean's Chevy, Parton recalled, and their tastes as a couple never got a whole lot fancier (though Forbes put Parton's estimated net worth at $440 million in 2023). They continued to patronize local restaurants and go on road trips, Ringgold—where they said "I do"—being one of their regular destinations.

Instagram (@dollyparton)

"I love to read. I love to cook. I love hanging out with my husband, riding around in our little RV," Parton told Billboard in 2014. "Even when I get off the road after traveling thousands of miles, I'll say, 'Get the camper; let's go somewhere.' He'll say, 'Are you kidding? Ain't you tired of riding?' 'No, I'm a gypsy. I want to do that.' My life is fairly simple when I'm out of the limelight."

Though if you wanted to catch her and Dean at Publix or Walmart, you had to stay up late.

"We'd go in the middle of the night to those places that are open 24 hours a day," Parton told reporters in 2019 while celebrating the premiere of her Netflix series Dolly Parton's Heartstrings. "You'd be surprised at how lucky I'd get with that. You see a few people, and I don't mind—I love people—I just don't want to slow up my shopping."

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Carl Dean's 15 Minutes

While the lack of photos of the pair out in public may have frustrated Parton watchers over the years—"That has led a lot of people to believe that my husband doesn't exist and that I made him up," she wrote in her 2020 book—the singer has shared a few throwback snapshots with the world.

And she cheekily included her man on the cover of her 1969 album My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy, a composite image showing Parton daydreaming away about her rugged fellow in the lumberjack shirt.

But Parton respected Dean's aversion to the spotlight, so she kept him out of it as much as possible.

"He's like a quiet, reserved person," she told ET in 2020, "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."

John Shearer/WireImage

I Will Always Love You

When they renewed their vows at home on their 50th anniversary, Parton finally got to wear the dazzling wedding dress of her dreams. She also penned a song to go with their vows, "Forever Love," one of several tracks inspired by her and Dean's forever-love affair on her 2016 album Pure and Simple.

"I got all dressed up in the most beautiful gown you've ever seen and dressed that husband of mine up," she told Rolling Stone of their second big day. "He looked like a handsome dude out of Hollywood. We had a few family and friends around. We didn't plan anything big at all because we didn't want any kind of strain, any kind of tension, any kind of commotion, so we planned it cleverly and carefully. We just had a simple little ceremony at our chapel at our place...We just had fun with it."

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Along with the usual questions about her secrets to marital success, Parton also fielded her share of inquiries about her and Dean's status as a family of two.

"I used to think I should regret it," Parton told Billboard about not having children. "Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids. We weren't doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn't turn out that way. Now I say, 'God didn't mean for me to have kids so everybody's kids could be mine.'"

She shared with The Guardian that if they'd ever had a little girl, they would've named her Carla, and she and Dean thought a lot about what their kids might have been like.

"I would have been a great mother, I think," Parton said. "I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would've felt guilty about that, if I'd have left them [to work]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn't have been a star."

Instagram (@dollyparton)

But as the fourth of 12 siblings, she has had plenty of people in her life to dote on.

"I'm very close to my family—five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years— and we're very close to our nieces and nephews," she told Billboard. "Now that Carl and I are older, we often say, 'Aren't you glad we didn't have kids? Now we don't have kids to worry about.'"

Which also left more time to focus on each other.

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Happily Ever After

"We still have our little times, like in the springtime when the first yellow daffodils come out," Parton told People in 2020. "Even if there's still some snow around it, my husband always brings me a bouquet. And he'll usually write me a little poem. Which to me, that's priceless. That's like a date in itself."

Whether it was a candlelit dinner at home or hitting the road and overnighting in a Days Inn ("as long as the bed's clean and there's a bathroom"), they were happiest just doing their thing.

And though Dean never went to the Grammys or the Oscars, since Parton is rarely without makeup (even sleep is no match for her mascara) and has never needed a reason other than being awake to get all dolled up, he still regularly saw his wife in her glamorous element.

"He knows I'm always going to kind of be fixed up for him because I don't believe in going home and being a slouch," she said. But for the most part, "He doesn't care what I wear as long as I'm happy. He loves me the way I am."

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