Dolly Parton Shares Rare Photo With Husband

Dolly Parton has been a public figure for over six decades, but her husband, Carl Dean, has managed to keep a remarkably private profile for nearly that entire time. So whenever he shows up on her Instagram page, it’s a big surprise. On March 25, he made another rare appearance, although the two-year-old photo showed only the back of his head.

Parton showed a photo of herself wearing a Playboy bunny costume, similar to the one she wore on the magazine’s October 1978 cover. Dean is seen sitting in his chair, with Parton smiling down at him behind a framed copy of the magazine. She included a second image showing a model wearing a shirt with the cover printed on it. “Any bunny think Carl will like this new shirt?” Parton captioned the post.

The photo with Dean was not new. Back in July 2021, Parton shared a video of herself in the Playboy bunny costume, which she said she wore as a gift to Dean on his 75th birthday. She also recreated the cover as part of the surprise. The clip ended with the photo Parton shared last week.

“Remember some time back I said I was gonna pose on Playboy magazine when I’m 75? Well, I’m 75 and they don’t have a magazine anymore, but my husband always loved the original cover of Playboy,” Parton said in the video. “I was trying to think of something to do to make him happy. He still thinks I’m a hot chick after 57 years and I’m not gonna try to talk him out of that.”

Parton and Dean married in May 1966. They renewed their vows in May 2016 to mark their 50th anniversary. Since Dean rarely ever appears in public, there have been false rumors that he isn’t even a real person, despite photographic evidence that he is. Parton even mentioned this in her book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.

“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,” Parton said of her husband in an October 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight. She went on to explain that she respects his desire to remain out of the spotlight.

“I’ve always respected and appreciated that in him and I’ve always tried to keep him out of the limelight as much as I can,” Parton said in 2020. “He said, ‘I didn’t choose this world, I chose you, and you chose that world. But we can keep our lives separate and together.’ And we do and we have. We’ve been together 56 years, married 54.”

Parton has also mentioned in the past that Dean isn’t a big fan of country music. “He’s not necessarily one of my biggest fans of my music,” Parton told Good Morning Britain in 2019. “He’s proud of me. And he loves that I love what I do. I think it’s just, it’s a touchy subject. I’m like his little girl, I think. He just worries about that. He likes hard rock, he likes Led Zeppelin and bluegrass music, so my music is somewhere in between. He doesn’t dislike it, but he doesn’t go out of his way to play my records, let’s put it that way.”