Dolly Parton has put her love for her husband into track, simply days after he died on the age of 82.
Parton introduced the discharge of the only If You Hadn’t Been There on Friday in an Instagram publish, penned in honour of her longtime husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who died on Monday.
“I fell in love with Carl Dean once I was 18 years previous. We’ve spent 60 treasured and significant years collectively,” Parton wrote. “Like all nice love tales, they by no means finish. They reside on in reminiscence and track. He’ll all the time be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this track to him.”
The lyrics pay tribute to the help Parton, 79, obtained from Dean over the course of their six-decade relationship.
“If you happen to hadn’t been there / The place would I be?/ With out your belief / Love and perception,” the track begins, earlier than reflecting on their love story and the help that got here with it.

Get breaking Nationwide information
For information impacting Canada and all over the world, join breaking information alerts delivered on to you after they occur.
“I wouldn’t be right here / If you happen to hadn’t been there / Holding my hand,” she sings, “Displaying you care / You made me dream / Greater than I dared / And I wouldn’t be right here / If you happen to hadn’t been there.”
Parton met Dean — who famously averted the highlight all through their prolonged marriage — exterior the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville when she was 18. They had been married two years later, on Could 30, 1966, in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Ga., and saved their marriage very non-public through the years.
Dean was a businessman who owned an asphalt paving enterprise in Nashville.
In 2008, Parton informed NPR that Dean impressed her traditional track Jolene, which she penned after a flirty financial institution teller appeared to have taken an curiosity in Dean.
“She obtained this horrible crush on my husband,” she stated. “And he simply cherished going to the financial institution as a result of she paid him a lot consideration. It was sort of like a operating joke between us — once I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending loads of time on the financial institution. I don’t imagine we’ve obtained that sort of cash.’ So it’s actually an harmless track throughout, however seems like a dreadful one.”
Parton spoke about her mysterious husband Dean desirous to stay out of the general public eye in a 2020 interview with Leisure Tonight.
“Lots of people have thought that [he doesn’t exist] by means of the years, as a result of he doesn’t wish to be within the highlight in any respect,” Parton stated on the time. “It’s simply not who he’s. He’s, like, a quiet, reserved individual.”

— With information from World Information’ Katie Scott
© 2025 World Information, a division of Corus Leisure Inc.