THE NEW YORK TIMES – Carl Dean, an asphalt paver who met his future wife, Dolly Parton, outside a Nashville laundromat more than six decades ago and quietly championed her as she rose to superstardom, died on Monday. He was 82.
Ms. Parton announced his death in a statement shared on social media. No cause was given.
While his wife was a world-famous star, Mr. Dean was a private man who kept a low profile. In a 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Ms. Parton said her husband had never wanted to be in the spotlight.
“It’s just not who he is,” Ms. Parton said. “He’s like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace and he’s right about that.”
Mr. Dean was born to Virginia Bates Dean, known as Ginny, and Edgar Henry Dean, according to Ms. Parton’s website. He lived in East Ridge, Tenn., as a child, Ms. Parton told a local news channel in Chattanooga, Tenn. While Ms. Parton became a country star, he pursued a quiet life owning an asphalt-paving business.
The couple met outside the WishyWashy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville in 1964, according to Ms. Parton’s website, when Ms. Parton was 18 and Mr. Dean was 21. They married two years later on Memorial Day in 1966 in Ringgold, Ga., with only Ms. Parton’s mother, a preacher and his wife in attendance.
Ms. Parton and Mr. Dean lived on a farm outside Nashville for decades.
Ms. Parton’s 1973 hit song “Jolene” was inspired by a bank teller who took interest in her husband in the early days of their marriage, she said in an interview with National Public Radio in 2008.
“He just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention,” Ms. Parton said in the interview …
