Carl Dean quietly defended her when she stood up at Superstarm on the asphalt paver, where he met his future wife, Dolly Parton, outside the Nashville Laundry more than 60 years ago. He was 82 years old.
Parton announced his death in a statement shared on social media. No cause was given.
His wife was a world-renowned star, but Mr. Dean was a discreet person. In a 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Parton said her husband didn't want to be in the spotlight.
“It's not who he is,” Parton said. “He seemed like a quiet and modest person and I thought about whether he was there in it.
Dean was born to Virginia Bates Dean and Edgar Henry Dean, known as Ginny, according to Parton's website. He lived in East Ridge, Tennessee as a child, so Parton spoke to a local news channel in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
According to Parton's website, the couple met outside their preferred sink on their day they moved to Nashville in 1964.
Parton and Dean lived on farms outside Nashville for decades.
Parton's 1973 hit “Jolene” was inspired by a bank teller who had an interest in her husband early in her marriage, she said in a 2008 interview with National Public Radio.
“He paid so much attention to him that he loved going to the bank,” Parton said in an interview. “It was like a joke between us. When I was saying, 'Hell, you spend a lot of time in the bank. I don't think we have that kind of money.' So, it's a really innocent song, but it sounds like a scary song. ”
Parton says her longtime husband has influenced several other songs.
Earlier in her career, the song “I am a woman” described the disappointment of a man who believed she was “angel” but married a man who learned that she was more complicated.
In an interview with the 2023 podcast, Parton said about eight months after his marriage, Dean said, “I started asking questions about my past. Anyway, I told the truth, but he wasn't very happy about it, so I wrote the song.”
Her 2012 love ballad “From Here to the Moon” was also inspired by Dean, and she told ABC News that her 2023 album “Rockstar” was influenced by her love for rock music.
“Even since I met him in 1964 – he just had a rock and roll blast, that's his music,” she told ABC.
The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2016 by updating an event that inspired her album “Pure & Simple.”
Dean usually did not interview him. As a result, Dean rarely appeared in the spotlight. In certain respects, rumors were swirling that the two were not actually married.
“I think they just made him,” Parton mentioned Dean in a 2024 television interview.
In the same interview, Parton recounted the story of going to dinner for his first awards with Dean, who attended Gridging but was “absolutely miserable.”
“We got in the car and he said, 'What do you know, I want to do it really well with you,'” Parton recalled, and he told her, “I'm not going to care more about them.” She laughs and says she then stopped asking him to attend her event.
Parton has been asked in interviews about wanting children for many years. The couple spoke after their first marriage, and “dreaming,” Parton told the Guardian, but that wasn't intended, she said. “Are we older now? I'm happy.”
Dean was one of the steady forces of Parton's life, Parton said.
“God is good for me,” she said. “He gave me Carl Dean, and it was the perfect guy I needed.”
