Originally appeared on E! Online
Dolly Parton will always love Carl Dean.
In fact, the country music legend spoke highly of their decades-long marriage in the months before Dean died on March 3 at age 83.
“It is important to have someone there in your corner and you know they’ll love you for just who you are,” Parton told E! News co-hosts Keltie Knight and Justin Sylvester during exclusive interview in May. “There’s a great comfort in knowing that someone loves you exactly for who you are — because he fell in love with me before I became a star.”
While Dean had always preferred to remain outside of the spotlight, he was her biggest cheerleader.
“It’s like, I’m his star,” the 79-year-old quipped at the time, adding that their unique dynamic has “worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together.”
“We just enjoy each other,” she continued. “One of the things that we like to do—not necessarily a date night, we have a lot of date days—we have our little RV and we like to travel around. Going down and get some food, or I’ll make a picnic and we go down to the river.”
READ Dolly Parton’s Husband Carl Dean Dead at 82
And whenever she was on the road alone, the “Jolene” singer always had her man in mind.
“Carl and I have never bought big fancy presents for each other,” she explained to E! News in December. “When I see things through the years that I think he would like, when I’m out, I’ll just kind of collect stuff and give them to him.”
Country music legend Dolly Parton visited eastern Tennessee and announced she would be donating $1 million to Hurricane Helene victims.
It was a tradition that Dean also enjoyed. As she noted, “He knows I love to cook when I’m home and he always buys me something for the kitchen. A new pot or a new pan or some kind of something he’s seen on TV he thinks I might like.”
That’s why Parton said she “never missed” the chance to spend Christmas with Dean. After all, the holidays are what she called a “sacred time” for the couple.
“I try to book all my things beforehand,” the “9 to 5” star explained, saying that she’ll often tell her team, “‘Do not book me, certainly for the week of Christmas, ’cause I need to be home with my family.'”
