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    Dolly Parton Revealed the Name She Had Picked Out for a Baby Girl

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    Dolly Parton had one name she would always love.

    While the celebrated country star—who died Aug. 25 after a brief battle with cancer at the age of 80—and her late husband Carl Deannever had kids together during their nearly six decades of marriage, the two were certainly considering the possibly early on and even had a name picked out if they’d welcomed a daughter. 

    “You always wonder. My husband and I, when we first got married, we thought about if we had kids, what would they look like? Would they be tall—because he’s tall? Or would they be little squats like me?” Parton shared with The Guardian in 2014. “If we’d had a girl, she was gonna be called Carla.”

    “Anyway, we talked about it, and we dreamed it,” she continued, “but it wasn’t meant to be.”

    And while the Grammy winner battled endometriosis and had a partial hysterectomy in her 30s, as she and Dean got older they were glad they’d never had children.

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    “I would have been a great mother, I think. I would probably have given up everything else,” she mused. “Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work, to tour]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”

    Thankfully, Parton was able to shower her siblings and their children with the same love she likely would have shown her own kids. 

    Dolly Parton/Instagram

    “I grew up in a big old family with eight kids younger than me and several of my brothers and sisters came to live with me early on in my life,” she told People Country in 2014. “I’ve loved their kids just like they’re my grandkids, and now I’ve got great-grand-kids!”

    In fact, her nieces and nephews referred to the “Jolene” singer as AuntGranny and called her husband Dean Uncle PeePaw.

    “The older [Carl and I] get, the gladder we are that we don’t have [kids] now, because we take care of a lot of other people’s kids,” Parton shared with Rolling Stone in 2003. “We buy new cars for all the nieces and nephews that graduate, we send any to college that want to go.” 

    In addition to the children in her family, Parton also put her maternal instincts to use when it came to establishing her Imagination Library, a non-profit that provides free books to children under the age of five.

    David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

    “I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library,” she explained to Oprah Winfrey on a 2020 episode of her Apple TV series The Oprah Conversation. “Because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done. I wouldn’t be in a position to do all of the things I’m doing now.”

    And true to form, as the “9 to 5” singer’s manager DannyNozell shared, Parton was focusing on her work in her final days. 

    “Dolly worked up until the day she died,” he shared in an Aug. 26 press release. “She loved seeing her dreams come to life, and loved knowing her work brought people joy.” 

    “Ever the planner, Dolly worked with the team that she handpicked, for the past several years to build a project roadmap that will guide us for decades to come,” Nozell explained. “As the leader of the team responsible for overseeing her legacy, we will ensure the many dreams she had yet to fulfill are brought to life.”

    For more about Parton and Dean’s endearing love story, keep reading.

    Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

    New Girl in TownDolly Parton left two boyfriends behind in her hometown of Sevierville, Tenn., so getting into a new relationship was the last thing on her mind when she moved to Nashville in 1964, right after graduating from high school.Alas, she met Carl Dean while walking down the street on her way to the laundromat the day she arrived in Music City.As remembered by Parton (Dean—who died March 3, 2025, at the age of 82—never spoke to the press), he was driving by in a white Chevrolet when he called out, “You’re gonna get sunburnt out here, little lady!”

    Dolly Parton/Instagram

    They got to talking “and I fell for him, and he fell for me,” she wrote in her 2020 book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. In another interview, the 5-foot artist, who was 18 when they met, recalled how tan Dean was as he towered over her at 6-foot-2. (The 22-year-old had an asphalt paving business with his father, so was bronzed from working outside.)She did not, however, hop right into his car. “You gotta know somebody or they may take you on a back road and kill you,” she pointed out, per Stephen Miller‘s 2011 biography, Smart Blonde. Parton did invite Dean to visit her at her aunt and uncle’s house the next day, which he did, though she would only sit with him outside. He came back every day for a week and when he took her out for their first date, he drove her to his parents’ house first because, Parton said, “he said he knew right from the minute he saw me that that’s the one he wanted.”

    dollyparton.com

    Artist of Many TalentsBut as she started to make a name for herself as a songwriter, collaborating frequently with her uncle Bill Owens, her boss at Combine Music, Fred Foster, warned it would be a bad idea for her to get married, as she was on the verge of getting her big break as a singer.Instead, she and Dean—who’d been planning a big wedding—didn’t put off getting married another day, eloping to Ringgold, Ga., and tying the knot May 30, 1966, with only mother-of-the-bride Avie Lee Parton by their side (and serving as their wedding photographer).

    Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

    They kept it so quiet, Foster didn’t even know they were husband and wife for a year, until one day the label exec—pointing to Parton’s growing success—cracked, “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t get married?” The “Jolene” singer has explained that, while her passport says Dolly Parton Dean, she didn’t change her name professionally because she already had a record deal with her maiden name.”Anyway, if I had chosen the name Dolly Dean,” she cracked to The Guardian in 2014, “I’d have been Double D. Again!”

    Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

    Parton did bring her spouse to one big event, the BMI Awards banquet in 1966, where she and Owens were being honored in the country category for writing “Put It Off Until Tomorrow.”Afterward, Dean started pulling off his tuxedo before they’d even reached the car. “He said, ‘I’m happy for you,'” Parton wrote in her book. “‘I want you to do what you want to do. But don’t ever ask me to go to another one of them damn things, because I ain’t going.’ And he never has.”That was the first of 48 BMI Awards she has received, to go with the 10 Grammys (not including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011), nine Country Music Association Awards, 13 Academy of Country Music Awards and a host of other accolades.But the real prize was always waiting for Parton at home.  

    Chris Walter/WireImage

    Making It Work”I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love,” the 9 to 5 star told People in 2018. “I always say ‘Stay gone!’ and there’s a lot of truth to that. I travel a lot, but we really enjoy each other when we’re together and the little things we do.”One of their earliest dinner dates was at the McDonald’s drive-thru window in Dean’s Chevy, Parton recalled, and their tastes as a couple never got a whole lot fancier (though Forbes put Parton’s estimated net worth at $440 million in 2023). They continued to patronize local restaurants and go on road trips, Ringgold—where they said “I do”—being one of their regular destinations.

    Instagram (@dollyparton)

    “I love to read. I love to cook. I love hanging out with my husband, riding around in our little RV,” Parton told Billboard in 2014. “Even when I get off the road after traveling thousands of miles, I’ll say, ‘Get the camper; let’s go somewhere.’ He’ll say, ‘Are you kidding? Ain’t you tired of riding?’ ‘No, I’m a gypsy. I want to do that.’ My life is fairly simple when I’m out of the limelight.”Though if you wanted to catch her and Dean at Publix or Walmart, you had to stay up late.”We’d go in the middle of the night to those places that are open 24 hours a day,” Parton told reporters in 2019 while celebrating the premiere of her Netflix series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. “You’d be surprised at how lucky I’d get with that. You see a few people, and I don’t mind—I love people—I just don’t want to slow up my shopping.”
    Carl Dean’s 15 MinutesWhile the lack of photos of the pair out in public may have frustrated Parton watchers over the years—”That has led a lot of people to believe that my husband doesn’t exist and that I made him up,” she wrote in her 2020 book—the singer has shared a few throwback snapshots with the world.And she cheekily included her man on the cover of her 1969 album My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy, a composite image showing Parton daydreaming away about her rugged fellow in the lumberjack shirt.But Parton respected Dean’s aversion to the spotlight, so she kept him out of it as much as possible.”He’s like a quiet, reserved person,” she told ET in 2020, “and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace—and he’s right about that.”

    John Shearer/WireImage

    I Will Always Love YouWhen they renewed their vows at home on their 50th anniversary, Parton finally got to wear the dazzling wedding dress of her dreams. She also penned a song to go with their vows, “Forever Love,” one of several tracks inspired by her and Dean’s forever-love affair on her 2016 album Pure and Simple.”I got all dressed up in the most beautiful gown you’ve ever seen and dressed that husband of mine up,” she told Rolling Stone of their second big day. “He looked like a handsome dude out of Hollywood. We had a few family and friends around. We didn’t plan anything big at all because we didn’t want any kind of strain, any kind of tension, any kind of commotion, so we planned it cleverly and carefully. We just had a simple little ceremony at our chapel at our place…We just had fun with it.”

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    Along with the usual questions about her secrets to marital success, Parton also fielded her share of inquiries about her and Dean’s status as a family of two.”I used to think I should regret it,” Parton told Billboard about not having children. “Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids. We weren’t doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn’t turn out that way. Now I say, ‘God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine.'”She shared with The Guardian that if they’d ever had a little girl, they would’ve named her Carla, and she and Dean thought a lot about what their kids might have been like.”I would have been a great mother, I think,” Parton said. “I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”

    Instagram (@dollyparton)

    But as the fourth of 12 siblings, she has had plenty of people in her life to dote on.”I’m very close to my family—five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years— and we’re very close to our nieces and nephews,” she told Billboard. “Now that Carl and I are older, we often say, ‘Aren’t you glad we didn’t have kids? Now we don’t have kids to worry about.'”Which also left more time to focus on each other.

    dollyparton.com

    Happily Ever After”We still have our little times, like in the springtime when the first yellow daffodils come out,” Parton told People in 2020. “Even if there’s still some snow around it, my husband always brings me a bouquet. And he’ll usually write me a little poem. Which to me, that’s priceless. That’s like a date in itself.”Whether it was a candlelit dinner at home or hitting the road and overnighting in a Days Inn (“as long as the bed’s clean and there’s a bathroom”), they were happiest just doing their thing.And though Dean never went to the Grammys or the Oscars, since Parton is rarely without makeup (even sleep is no match for her mascara) and has never needed a reason other than being awake to get all dolled up, he still regularly saw his wife in her glamorous element.”He knows I’m always going to kind of be fixed up for him because I don’t believe in going home and being a slouch,” she said. But for the most part, “He doesn’t care what I wear as long as I’m happy. He loves me the way I am.”

    Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images

    The Final ChapterAfter Dean’s death, Parton told Today that living without him was “a big adjustment, just trying to change patterns and habits.”She’d be alright, she promised, “But I’ll always miss him, of course, and I’ll always love him.”And their heartwarming, inimitable story endures despite Parton’s death at 80, announced by her nephew on Aug. 25, 2026.

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