The couple met in 1964 outside a laundry machine, the same day as the then 18-year-old star moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
"I was surprised and delighted that he looked at my face when we talked, it's unusual for me. He seemed genuinely interested in who I was", Parton describes the meeting in a statement to the AP news agency.
Parton and Dean got married two years later and were married for 60 years. Over the years, the star has been reticent about her private life and rarely showed herself with her husband. In an interview with AP in 1984, she joked about wanting to pose on the cover of a magazine with Carl Dean;
"So that people would at least know that I'm not married to a toad".
