Dolly Parton: Why She Wed Her Husband A Second Time
Dolly Parton’s husband of almost 60 years passed away on March 10. The country icon posted the news to Instagram, saying, in part, “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words cannot do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”
Days after his death, Parton released a song for him called “If You Hadn’t Been There.” She said when she announced the new song, “I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old. We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together. Like all great love stories, they never end. They live on in memory and song. He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him. ‘If You Hadn’t Been There.'”
In one of my many interviews with Dolly over the years, she once told me details of her 1966 wedding to Carl and why she decided to re-marry her man on their 50th Wedding Anniversary a few years ago.
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Parton shared before her re-marry ceremony happened, “I had him trying on suits, and I’m trying on this wedding gown. When we first got married, I had just signed with Monument Records, and Fred Foster, who was the head of the label, he was investing quite a bit of money to get me started in the business. And he had heard that I was engaged and we had already sent out our wedding invitations and so he called me in the office and said, ‘Dolly, we’d really appreciate if you wouldn’t get married for at least a year, so I can make sure that I can get a return on my investment case I want you to be free to work and do whatever you need to do.'”
She continued, “I said, ‘Okay.’ So, that weekend, me and Carl went to Ringold, Georgia, and got married so it wouldn’t be in the Tennessee papers. My mom went with us, and my mom made me a little white dress, and I said, ‘I’m not getting married at a courthouse,’ so we had to be back the following Monday. I had to be married in a church. So we… Carl’s not Baptist, I’m not Baptist but we actually got married in Ringold, Georgia, in a Baptist church, no people there just the preacher, his wife, and Mama.”
Dolly explained why she wanted to re-marry Carl at the time. She told me, “We felt we never got a chance to do our whole big wedding, and I missed having a wedding dress and all that, so we are going to wed again and invite a lot of folks, and we’re going take pictures, and I might even sell some to the rag mags for The Imagination Library (her book charity).”
