When Dolly Parton speaks, we should all just listen.
Whether the country music legend is talking about her storied career, her various business ventures, or her 58-years of marriage, we can all learn a lot from what Dolly has to say. When she sat down recently with Bunnie XO on The Dumb Blonde Podcast, she gave a number of helpful tips you can follow to live a happy life.
Some of those words of wisdom had to do with how she and her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, have gotten along so well for almost six decades.
The two met at a laundromat when Dolly was just 18-years-old and Carl was 21. It was a love-at-first-sight story, and they’ve been together ever since. Well, together as a couple, but not always together as far as traveling from place to place and making appearances with one another.
It’s very well documented that Carl Dean likes to stay out of the spotlight, and has just as much fun cheering on his wife from the comfort of his own home. Parton and Thomas figured that out very early on, as she explained to Bunnie XO:
“He loves music, but he’s not the least bit interested in being in it. And he told me that right up front. I begged him to go with me in ‘67. We’d got married in ‘66. So, that’s when I won the first award for the BMI song of the year (“Put it Off Until Tomorrow.”). And I rented him a tux and, you know, begged him to go, and he did. And, oh, he was so uncomfortable the whole night.
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. So we just kind of have that respect, and I respected that because I didn’t know he was gonna be that uneasy, but he doesn’t even like to go out to, you know, to big dinners or anything like that.”
Despite Carl Dean not being interested in the celebrity lifestyle, he and Dolly Parton are the perfect match. There’s an “opposites attract” aspect to their relationship, and they’ve both found that humor is detrimentally important to a successful marriage.
Parton further explained how they get along, and made sure to point out that they don’t take life too seriously:
“He’s quiet and I’m loud, and we’re funny. Oh, he’s hilarious. And I think one of the things that’s made it last so long through the years is that we love each other (and) we respect each other, but we have a lot of fun. Anytime (there’s) too much tension going on, either one of us can like, find a joke about it to really break the tension, where we don’t let it go so far.”
Dolly credits their shared sense of humor and hunger for laughter to their long-lasting relationship. And not letting things go “so far” has also prevented fighting in their marriage, which Parton says she appreciates and values more than anything:
“We never fought back and forth. And I’m glad now that we never did, because once you start that, that becomes a lifetime thing. I’ve seen it with so many people, and I thought, ‘I ain’t ever starting that.’ I couldn’t bear to think that he’d say something I couldn’t take… because I’m a very sensitive person toward other people and myself.”
So there you have it, folks. The key to a happy marriage – at least if you ask Dolly Parton – is to laugh things off and never let things go too far. As I stated before, the Queen of Country Music has never led me astray before, so I’ll go ahead and turn her advice into a couple of my New Year’s resolutions.
You can view a portion of Dolly’s conversation with Bunnie XO in the video below, or you can follow this link to watch the entire interview: