Dean died in Nashville on March 3, 2025, aged 82, and his body now rests in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville.<\/p>\n
The pair shared more than six decades together after meeting outside a laundromat on the day Parton arrived in Tennessee to pursue her music career. <\/p>\n
They married two years later in a modest ceremony in Georgia and maintained an intensely private relationship throughout their marriage.<\/p>\n
After his death, Parton described Dean as the perfect partner, adding, \u201cHe is in God\u2019s arms now and I am okay with that\u201d.<\/p>\n
Parton\u2019s nephew and head of security, Bryan Seaver, told Page Six the music icon asked to be laid to rest in a \u201cbeautiful bed of plush cotton\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest,\u201d Seaver said.<\/p>\n
Parton revealed other details of the service years before her death. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, she spoke about the music she hoped would be played at her funeral.<\/p>\n
Dolly Parton will be laid to rest next to her husband, Carl Dean. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
She said many will expect I Will Always Love You, a song she was personally touched by when she heard it play at Whitney Houston\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they picked her coffin up and started in on that song, I started to cry, and I thought, \u2018Oh my Lord.\u2019 That\u2019s when it hit me that she was really gone,\u201d Parton told Entertainment Weekly.<\/p>\n
Instead, Parton said she wanted the traditional country-gospel song If We Never Meet Again to be sung.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my daddy\u2019s favourite. We did sing it at his funeral, and I would like it to be sung at mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports have suggested Parton\u2019s death came unexpectedly for many of those close to her, with relatives and friends travelling to be with her after she was admitted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She had reportedly been dealing with ongoing kidney and autoimmune health issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dean died in Nashville on March 3, 2025, aged 82, and his body now rests in a mausoleum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5195,83890,13657,2841,36473,25014,156,2109,37235,26524,10109,3218,48205,29137,15167,3242,157,111,139,69,28720,1136,3109,37410,28029,2552,131,61,1533,24529,102],"class_list":["post-581299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-be","tag-beside","tag-carl","tag-country","tag-dean","tag-dolly","tag-entertainment","tag-family","tag-farewelled","tag-funeral","tag-husband","tag-icon","tag-icons","tag-keeping","tag-laid","tag-large","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parton","tag-private","tag-public","tag-rather","tag-rest","tag-service","tag-than","tag-to","tag-will","tag-wishes","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}