Dolly Parton Reveals Heartbreaking News About Husband of 60 Years: ‘He Was a God-Send’

Dolly Parton’s husband of 60 years, who avoided the spotlight in her lifelong career and served as the inspiration behind her timeless song “Jolene,” has died.

Carl Dean passed away Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, Parton’s publicist confirmed.

Parton also posted a short statement on Instagram on Monday.

“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together,” she said in the statement. “Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”

Dean will be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family attending, she added. The family has requested privacy at this time.

Their love story began 62 years ago when they met outside a Wishy Washy Laundromat.

Parton was 18 years old and had just moved to Nashville.

“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.”

Two years later and against the advice of her record label, Parton and Dean snuck across state lines to Georgia and got married in a small ceremony in Ringgold on Memorial Day. They hoped to keep the news out of the Tennessee newspapers.

Parton told CBN News in a 2016 interview that her husband was a “God-send.”

“I think my husband and my relationship was just really a God-send,” Parton said. “God knew I was going to need somebody like him if I was going to be doing all this crazy stuff.”

“But He knew he (Carl) was going to need somebody like me because Carl is pretty much a loner and he really doesn’t want to be with anybody but me,” she added.

Dean was the inspiration behind Parton’s classic “Jolene.”

Parton told NPR in 2008 that she wrote the song about a flirty bank teller who took an interest in Dean.

“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” she said. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘H***, 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.”

In 2023, she told AP that her beloved husband inspired her “Rockstar” album.

“He’s a big rock and roller,” she said. The song “My Blue Tears,” which was written when Parton was with “The Porter Wagoner Show” in the late 1960s and early ’70s, is “one of my husband’s favorite songs that I ever wrote,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, I better put one of Carl’s favorites of mine in here.'”

The Nashville businessman has stayed clear of the limelight, never attending events with Parton and being rarely seen in photos with her.

It is something that Parton says has kept their relationship so strong in the industry.

“He has always been for me. He has always been supportive, but he doesn’t try to get into the business,” she said. “He always said, ‘Just leave me out of that. I am not going to any of these shindigs. I am not doing any of that.'”

Dean is survived by Parton and his siblings, Sandra and Donnie. No cause of death has been announced.

***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***