Dolly Parton Gave Ultra-Rare Details About How Her Marriage to Carl Dean Has Stayed Exciting After 57 Years

One of the most successful, and most private, relationships in Hollywood is the 57-year marriage between legend Dolly Parton and her husband Carl Dean. Despite being together for nearly 60 years, fans have never seen Dean in recent years, and Parton rarely gives details about their romance. However, she did give fans a major detail: how they keep their romance exciting after nearly six decades.

In a recent interview with EOnline, Parton talked about how spending time apart is the key to their marriage.

“I’m just saying, anything new gets old,” she said. “And I think if you just kind of stay together so much, you just nitpick every little thing and notice all that.”

She added, “It’s worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together. So the fact that there’s some little space that makes it exciting when you go home.”

Now, what do they do when they reunite? Lots of things!

“We just enjoy each other,” she said. “I like to cook. And one of the things that we like to do—not necessarily a date night, we have a lot of date days—we have our little RV and we like to travel around. Going down and get some food or I’ll make a picnic and we go down to the river and have a picnic and just kind of ride around and do our little things.”

For those who don’t know, the pair met in 1976, and in 1978, they married in an intimate ceremony in Georgia at the Ringgold Baptist Church.

Now, this actually isn’t the first time Parton has talked about how distance makes the heart grow fonder. Parton told People in 2018 that, “I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love. I always say ‘Stay gone! and there’s a lot of truth to that. I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do.”

Before you go, click here to see the longest celebrity marriages.