Dolly Parton grew up in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, which are, naturally, filled with wildlife. Some of that wildlife is potentially deadly, but Parton risked an encounter rather than having to do something else that made her uncomfortable. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday, the country star took part in a game of True Confessions with host Jimmy Fallon and guest Noah Centineo, where each player had to guess whether said confession was true or false.
Parton went first, reading a piece of paper that said, “I dated a guy and he kicked me out of a car and made me walk home through a forest with bears and bobcats.” Fallon and Centineo attempted to discern whether the story was true, Centineo asking, “Did you encounter bears and bobcats?” “Absolutely,” Parton replied. “I heard them, felt them.” The country icon added that she was around 17 or 18 years old at the time of the date and that she was only on the date because the boy had a car.
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“It was a put out or get out situation,” she added. The story turned out to be true, and Parton even shared a lesson. “I did learn something that night, though,” she said. “I thought, if that ever happens to me again, I’m definitely giving it up. I would rather be chewed on by a boy than a bear.”
Shortly after that bad date, Parton began dating her now-husband Carl Dean, who she married in 1966. Dean has almost never been seen in public with his famous wife, and Parton told Entertainment Tonight that her frequent trips away from home are one of the keys to their decades-long marriage.
“Our joke about the fact, when people ask me why it’s lasted this long, I say, ‘Because I stay gone.’ And there’s a lot of truth in that — the fact that we’re not in each other’s faces all the time,” she reflected. “But we do have a great respect and admiration for each other. We both have a great sense of humor. So, we have a lot of fun.”
She also responded to fans who don’t think Dean exists, explaining that her husband simply doesn’t like the spotlight. “A lot of people have thought that through the years, because he does not want to be in the spotlight at all,” Parton said. “It’s just not who he is. He’s like, a quiet, reserved person 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.”
