Dolly Parton recently visited the church where she married her late husband, Carl Dean, nearly 60 years ago.
Parton, 79, spoke about her late husband, her upcoming book, Dollywood, her soon-to-premiere musical, her newly-debuted exhibit in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and more in a recent interview on America Reports on Fox News. Dean died on Monday, March 3 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 82. The “I Will Always Love You” legend previously shared that she wasn’t looking for a relationship when she moved to Nashville to pursue her career in music, but she met Dean on her first day in town outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat, and she “fell in love.” They got married in Georgia on May 30, 1966.
“I am a person of faith, even though I lost him on this earthly plane, and I will miss him every day, having to learn new patterns, new habits, but knowing that I will see him again and knowing that he’s in God’s arms now and not mine. But he's still in my heart and in my memories, and I treasure all that,” Parton said in the interview when asked how her faith has helped her cope with the loss. “We got married down in Ringgold, Georgia. And we would always go down to Ringgold so — in and around our anniversary every year since we were married. And so I went down there the other day on our anniversary. And they put a big plaque up in the yard of that church where we got married. It talks about us getting married there. And we would always go and have a picnic. So, anyway, that’s where I spent my anniversary, our first — my first — our anniversary without him, the first on. So I thought, well, I have got to go back and just take a picture on that — on the same steps at that same church.”
Parton added that she wore Dean’s wedding ring on a gold chain when she visited the church, and felt “he was there with me.”
Parton has previously opened up about adjusting to life without her husband, including in an interview with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin last month. Parton said at that time that she feels “very emotional when people bring it up,” but she’ll “do fine” after the “big adjustment.” she added that she’s “so thankful” for the cards, flowers and support from people “all over the world.” Earlier in the year, she told the Knoxville News Sentinel that she’s “doing better than I thought I would. …I’m at peace that he’s at peace, but that don’t keep me from missing him and loving him.”
See Parton’s full America Reports interview here.