Dolly Parton explains why her longtime husband doesn’t attend events with her
Dolly Parton in Nashville
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Dolly Parton has been married for 58 years, but you probably could count on one hand the times you have seen her with her husband.
The legendary star recently appeared on Bunnie Xo’s “Dumb Blonde” podcast and talked about her famously private husband, Carl Dean.
The now 78-year-old singer said her 82-year-old husband refuses to go to awards shows with her.
“He loves music, but he’s not the least bit interested in being in it,” Parton said. “And he told me that right up front.”
Parton said she implored her husband to go with her to an event in 1967, when she won an award for the BMI song of the year.
“I rented him a tux and, you know, begged him to go and he did,” she said. “And he was so uncomfortable the whole night.”
Her husband wasn’t shy about letting her know how much he didn’t enjoy the experience.
“He said, ‘Look, now I want you to do everything you want to do, and I wish you the best, but don’t ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain’t going,’” she recalled. “And he never did.”
It hasn’t stopped the pair from having a successful marriage.
Parton has credited her long marriage to “giving each other space,” noting in a 2022 interview that she and her husband are “not in each other’s face all the time.”
“He’s not in the business, so we have different interests, but yet we have the things we love to do together,” she said. “So it was meant to be, I think. He was the one I was supposed to have and and vice versa.”
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