Dolly Parton speaks out after husband Carl Dean’s death

Dolly Parton has spoken out after the death of her late husband, Carl Dean, this week.

“This is a love note to family, friends, and fans,” the country icon wrote in a Thursday Instagram post. “Thank you for all the messages, cards, and flowers that you’ve sent to pay your respects for the loss of my beloved husband, Carl. I can’t reach out personally to each of you, but just know it has meant the world to me.”

She concluded the post with a reference to her 1974 hit “I Will Always Love You,” which was famously covered by Whitney Houston. “He is in God’s arms now and I am okay with that,” Parton wrote. “I will always love you.”

Dean, Parton’s husband of 58 years, died March 3 in Nashville. Parton met Dean in 1964, on the very day that she moved to Nashville to pursue music. Despite her immense fame, Dean has remained a notoriously private figure throughout their decades-long marriage, a preference that Parton has honored.

Parton recently recalled the one time her husband accompanied her to an event when she won an award for the BMI Song of the Year.

“I rented him a tux and begged him to go, and he did,” she said during a 2024 interview on Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast. “And he was so uncomfortable the whole night.”

Afterward, Parton recalled, “He said, ‘Look, now, I want you to do everything you want to do, and 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.’ And he never did.”

Parton has long affirmed that the arrangement worked for them.

“They say that opposites attract, and it’s true,” she told PEOPLE in 2015. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me.”

Parton and Dean married in 1966, and the couple never had children.

Though Dean would remain largely outside the spotlight, his flirting inspired Parton’s classic hit “Jolene.” He rarely spoke to press, but in a rare interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2016 he recalled meeting Parton in 1964. “My first thought was, ‘I’m gonna marry that girl,'” he said. “My second thought was, ‘Lord, she’s good-lookin.’ And that was the day my life began. I wouldn’t trade the last 50 years for nothing on this earth.”

Following the news of his death, Parton shared a heartfelt statement on social media, writing, “Carl and I spent many wonderful years together. Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”