It was May 1964, and an 18-year-old Dolly Parton had just arrived in Nashville with nothing but tattered cardboard suitcases stuffed with dirty clothes and barely enough change for a meal. Standing outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat, she was soaking in the city’s energy when passing men whistled at her. Then, a 21-year-old asphalt contractor in a white Chevrolet pickup truck pulled to the curb with a casual warning that would change her life forever.
“He looked straight into my eyes, not at my figure, and warned me I was going to get sunburned out there,” Parton later recalled of Carl Thomas Dean, who admitted his first thought upon seeing her was that he was going to marry that girl.
Cautious on her first day, Parton declined his initial date invitation. But Dean was undeterred. He visited the home of her uncle and aunt, songwriter Bill Owens, and spent hours on the floor playing with their three-year-old son until he won her trust. On their first official date, he drove her straight to his parents’ Nashville house to meet his mother.
Two years later, Monument Records president Fred Foster urged Parton to delay marriage to protect her image as a rising young singer. Instead, on May 30, 1966, Parton and Dean crossed state lines to Ringgold, Georgia, and married in a small church with only her mother, the preacher, and the preacher’s wife as witnesses.
That same year, after attending a single BMI awards dinner in a rented tuxedo, Dean loosened his bow tie in the parking lot, wished her all the success in the world, and asked never to go to another industry event again. Parton kept that promise for nearly six decades, returning home from global tours to a husband in denim overalls who renewed their vows with her for their 50th anniversary in 2016.