Carl Thomas Dean, Dolly Parton's husband of nearly 60 years, has passed aged 82

Carl Thomas Dean, husband of country music icon Dolly Parton, has died. He was 82.

Dolly shared the news in a statement posted on her official Instagram page. 

"Carl and I spent many wonderful years together," she wrote. "Words can't do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy."

He is survived by his two siblings, Sandra and Donnie.

Dolly met Carl the day she moved to Nashville at 18 years old.

"I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me)," she once said. "He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about."

Carl was a private man and rarely attended any public events, opting to support Dolly in private instead.

Dolly told The Associated Press in 1984, “A lot of people say there’s no Carl Dean, that he’s just somebody I made up to keep other people off me.”

She joked that she’d like to pose with him on the cover of a magazine “so that people could at least know that I’m not married to a wart or something.”

"If I had it to do all over, I'd do it all over again," Dolly wrote in a statement for their 50th anniversary.

The pair had a love story that stayed out of the spotlight but never faded. 
Rest in peace, Carl Dean.