Dolly Parton is still head over heels in love with her husband Carl Dean after more than 50 years of marriage. The 75-year-old country music legend took to Instagram on Monday to gush about her love when sharing a rare throwback photo of her husband. In the image, Dean can be seen wearing a shirt with his wife’s face on it, though the shirt was digitally superimposed on his body for the vintage photo.
The “Jolene” singer shared the photo to promote her new line of merchandise, with Dean pictured (albeit Photoshopped) wearing the “Dolly Vintage Collage Tee.” She captioned the post, “Find you a partner who will support you like my Carl Dean does!” Given Dean’s elusive nature, the photo sparked plenty of comments from fans, with one person writing that Parton and Dean have “such a sweet relationship.” Another person commented, “you two make a beautiful couple,” while somebody else dubbed the couple “marriage goals.”
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Parton and Dean met outside a Nashville laundromat in 1964 and married two years later in Ringgold, Georgia. Only her mother and the pastor’s wife attended the ceremony. Parton was only 18 when they married. In their more than 50 years of marriage, however, Dean has only been spotted on rare occasions. In fact, he hardly ever appears on Parton’s socials, with the singer in 2017 having shared a photo of him giving her a kiss on the cheek. The post was in celebration of “Dolly’s Month of Love.” Just a few years later, Dean was spotted in public for the first time in nearly 40 years when he stepped out in Brentwood, Tennessee in January 2020.
Speaking to PEOPLE back in 2018, Parton credited distance as the key to their marriage. While the “9 to 5” songstress said she has “always made jokes that the reason our marriage has lasted so long is because I stay gone,” she admitted that “there’s a lot of truth in that. We’re not in each other’s face all the time. I think there’s a lot to be said about having some sensible separation because you can’t be with somebody 24/7, 365 and not want to smack their face now and then.” The 75-year-old added that another cornerstone of her and Dean’s relationship is “a great friendship.” She told PEOPLE that she and her husband are “both funny, and we both have a great and warped sense of humor so we’ve always had a good time. He’s pretty much a loner and a homebody, and I’m a gypsy. But when I’m home, I love that. We don’t do the same thing so it gives us different stuff to talk about.”
Parton and Dean marked their milestone 50th wedding anniversary in 2016. To celebrate the occasion, the couple renewed their wedding vows, with Parton saying in a statement on her website at the time, “If I had it to do all over, I’d do it all over again, and we did. I’m dragging him kicking and screaming into the next 50 years. Wish us luck.”
