Dolly Parton spoke about missing her late husband Carl Dean in newly surfaced interviews from the months before her death.
Parton, 79, told Entertainment Tonight in May 2025 that she “long[ed] for him every day,” two months after Dean died following an unspecified prolonged illness. The Grammy winner shared her grief in raw terms with the outlet, saying, “Of course I miss him. I’m having to really go through a lot trying to figure out how to be without him because I was with him for so long.”
She continued, “There’s that part of me that will miss him forever … For the rest of my life, I’m sure.”
However, Parton also found some comfort in his release from suffering, noting, “He did suffer a lot for the last few years, and there’s a part of me that’s happy he’s at peace and at rest.”
Six months later, the “Jolene” singer reflected further on their marriage in a conversation with People. She told the magazine, “Ours is a great old love story.”
Parton added to the outlet, “Most people don’t stay that close that long. That’s a loss. Nobody can ever know that unless you’ve experienced it yourself. He will always be in my heart and in my memories.”
Dean died in March 2025, nearly 59 years after the couple wed in May 1966. The pair had met at a Wishy Washy Laundromat on Parton’s first day in Nashville, Tennessee, two years prior, she said in 1976.
While celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2016, Dean recalled his first thought upon seeing Parton being, “I’m gonna marry that girl.”
He quipped, “My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’ And that was the day my life began.”
Dean proposed in 1966, with the duo tying the knot in Ringgold Baptist Church in Ringgold, Georgia, that same year.
Parton went public with her own “health challenges” later in 2025, admitting to People in her final interview Friday, “I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over Carl.” News of her death broke Tuesday, after the country music icon made headlines for canceling a slew of recent appearances.
In the viral moment that preceded her death, Parton’s candid reflections on widowhood and her own declining health drew renewed attention to a career that spanned decades of hit records, film roles, and philanthropic work. Her willingness to discuss personal loss so openly marked a rare unguarded turn for an entertainer who had long kept her private life largely separate from her public persona, even as she became one of the most recognizable figures in American popular culture.
Parton’s final interviews painted a portrait of a woman confronting mortality on multiple fronts — mourning a partner she had known since her earliest days in Nashville while acknowledging that her own health had deteriorated during the period she devoted to his care.