Dolly Parton’s husband has “never wanted” to be in the limelight.
The 77-year-old country music legend has been married to Carl Thomas Dean since 1996 but after accompanying her to a glitzy showbiz event early on in her career, he begged her to never ask him to go along to another one and he has rarely been seen by her side ever since.
Speaking on her Apple music show ‘What Would Dolly Do?’, she said: “Carl has never been in the limelight and all, never wanted to be in it. He don’t like it.
“He went to one thing with me early on when we first married to a BMI Song of the Year, and he came out there taking off his tuxedo, his tie, and all that, and said, ‘Don’t ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain’t going I never asked him and he never did.”
However, the ‘Jolene’ hitmaker – who recently released her 49th studio album ‘Rockstar’ – did admit that she can rely on her significant other to be “very honest” when it comes to what he thinks of her work.
She said: “I had done a couple of things in the past, just some rock things. He said, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ He’s very honest. We have such a great relationship. I know not to ask him if I don’t want an honest answer. Years ago, I was doing covers of some of these rock albums in a more bluegrass country way. I told him I was doing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ He said, ‘I don’t think you need to do that,’ and I said how I was going to do it. I played it for him and he said, ‘It’s okay.’ He said, ‘Are you sure that’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘Stairwell to Hell?”