Dolly Parton’s Husband Seen In Photos During Rare Public Outing 5 Years Before His Death

Carl Dean, Dolly Parton’s husband of nearly 60 years, died Monday (March 3), five years after he was last photographed during a rare public outing.

Photos of Carl Dean, who was 77 years old at the time, were captured while he was out and about near his home in Brentwood, Tennessee. Dean lived a notoriously private life during his marriage to Dolly and was been photographed very few times since their 1966 wedding.

Carl and Dolly met outside of a Nashville laundromat in 1964 when she was 18 and he was 21. They wed two years later when Dolly’s music career was just taking off. Rather than have an elaborate wedding, the couple kept it simple and eloped because her record label was worried that marriage would interfere with her music career.

Dolly, donning a white dress made by her mother, said “I do” to Dean in front of only her mother, the preacher, and his wife.

“My mother made me a little white dress and a little bouquet,” Parton told CMT. “But I said, ‘I can’t get married in a courthouse because I’ll never feel married.’ So we found a little Baptist church in town, and went up to Pastor Don Duvall and said, ‘Would you marry us?’ We got pictures on the steps right outside the church.”

Dolly and Carl’s Private Relationship

Dolly and Carl renewed their wedding vows in June 2016, on their 50th anniversary. The event gave Dolly the wedding she had always wanted. “Fifty years is a long time for anything, and I felt that we needed to do something to commemorate this. It’s been a good 50 years and I don’t know how many more years we’ll have left,” the “Jolene” singer said.

RELATED: DOLLY PARTON SHARES THE SECRET TO HER SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE TO CARL DEAN

During their decades-long marriage, Dean was content to let Dolly have the spotlight while he kept a low profile. But Dolly did share that she and her husband liked to go out to eat and grocery shop together, but usually in the middle of the night.

“We go to places Publix or Walmart or places for certain things I want to get, and we’d go in the middle of the night to those places that are open 24 hours a day,” she said during to the press while celebrating the release of her Netflix series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. “You’d be surprised at how lucky I’d get with that. You see a few people, and I don’t mind. I love people. I just don’t want to slow up my shopping.”

In 2019, photos were taken of Carl Dean during a trip to the local post office.

According to other outlets, Dean visited the post office near his Brentwood home, accompanied by his assistant. The pictures surprised fans, and they shared mixed reactions. Some were thrilled to catch a glimpse of the extremely private Carl Dean, others took issue with his privacy being invaded.

Check out the pictures HERE and let us know what you think.