Dolly Parton revealed exclusively to E! News the secret to her and Carl Dean’s marriage of almost six decades—and her answer might surprise you.
Sometimes, true love flourishes under a different 9 to 5.
In fact, Dolly Parton credits making sure to spend time apart as the source of success for her 57-year marriage to Carl Dean.
“I’m just saying, anything new gets old,” she told E! News’ Keltie Knight and Justin Sylvester at Dollywood’s new “The Dolly Parton Experience” in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. “And I think if you just kind of stay together so much, you just nitpick every little thing and notice all that.”
Because as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. “It’s worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together,” Dolly continued. “So the fact that there’s some little space that makes it exciting when you go home.” (For more with Dolly, tune into E! News Monday, June 3 at 11 p.m.)
But of course, after almost six decades of marriage, Dolly, 78, and Carl, 81, do have a number of favorite go-to activities for when they do spend time together.
We just enjoy each other,” the music legend explained. “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.”
