“The secret to being a private person is to overshare dumb stuff so people think you’re an open person but then not tell them any important details of your life.”
That is the cheeky message on an anonymous reel that cruises through my Instagram every so often, and which I happened to catch again this week — just hours before the news emerged that Carl Thomas Dean had died.
Not only had the legendary Dolly Parton lost her little-seen husband of 60 years but, along with it, a loss for us all: the end of the line for one the most exemplary of public marriages. My first thought.
As elusive as spouses go, and as un-TMI as couplings will get, theirs, after all, was a sturdy union — a long, gravel road of a marriage — and also a refreshingly matter-of-fact one. A unicorn of sorts in our present climate, turbocharged as it is by reality dating shows spooning overwrought fantasies about “The One” and also social media feeds turning all romantic pairings into performative shop windows for mass consumption.
“Dude laid asphalt his whole life married to one of the most famous people in America. Only ever saw her perform once and never wanted to be seen in public,” is what one person gamely tweeted. “Was probably the happiest man in the world. ”
“Zero Tweets. Zero Facebook posts. 10/10 life, no notes. Legend.” How someone else summed up it up.
“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together, words can’t do justice to the love we shared,” is what Dolly herself posted in part when the announcement came.
Larger-than-life, rhinestones-fabulous and the closest thing to a bipartisan figure in modern life: what the singer is today, of course. But her relationship with Carl began, as many know, before Dolly was Dolly — their meet-cute happening outside the Wishy Washy laundromat in Nashville in 1964. She was 19; he, 21. They wed two years later.
Not long later, her path to global fame had commenced, but her life with Carl remained a compartmentalized one. As she confirmed in an interview years and years later, he only did ever see her perform once, telling her afterwards: “I didn’t choose this world, I chose you, and you chose that world. But we can keep our lives separate and together.”
Escorting her precisely once to an awards show — back in 1967 — the man who ran a paving business, indeed, also told her afterwards: “I wish you the best, but don’t ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain’t going.”
A “situationship,” as the kids might call it these days. Whatever, it worked for them. Distance, she sort of joked to Vanity Fair a decade ago, was the secret to their longevity.
“We’ve been married for 50 years and I’ve been gone for about 47 of those. But the truth is, we’ve always been very compatible.”
And yet — in an echo of a favourite line of mine by poet Nick Laird, “Time is love” — Dolly also once remarked of her marriage: “Well, it’s just grown deeper. The longer you live with somebody, the more you know them, and you take on all their traits as well as them taking all of yours. And you just have a deeper and better understanding — more of an appreciation.
“We’ve always had a great respect for each other, and I think that’s been the thing that really and truly sustained us through the years.”
Content being in the Denis Thatcher/Doug Emhoff role, Carl was happy to let his wife shine, to bask in the applause. He was the Stedman to her Oprah. The Danny Moder to her Julia. And, inadvertently, even a muse — an inspiration for her most famous song.
Talking to NPR in 2008, Dolly stitched this story about the woman figure in her classic Jolene: “She got this terrible crush on my husband, and he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention.”
Likewise, when performing at the Glastonbury festival, Dolly told the crowd: “I wrote that years ago when my husband was spending a little more time with ‘Jolene’ than I thought he should be. I put a stop to that. I got rid of that redhead woman in a hurry.”
This, after all, from a woman who once also famously said: “I have to not harden my heart, because I want to stay open to feel things. So when I hurt, I hurt all over. And when I cry, I cry real hard. And when I’m mad, I’m mad all over …”
And yet, here was a Goldilocks marriage that didn’t need to be sung from the rooftops or be “sold.” No #CoupleGoals captions required, no overly sentimental moos about “My Person.” Heck, even now, very few photos exist of Dolly and Carl together on the internet.
“Carl’s one of those rare individuals who could be married to Dolly Parton because he’s got his head on straight,” is how Dolly’s guitarist, Don Roth, once shared. “He’s a good old country boy, extremely funny man.”
“Carl,” he said, “is the perfect husband for Dolly because he doesn’t demand anything of her, and he’ll always be there to come home to.”
