Dolly Parton to Miss Her 80th Birthday Show at Grand Ole Opry

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Dolly Partonwill be celebrating her birthday from afar.

Dolly Parton won’t be able to attend her 80th birthday concert at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on January 17th, she announced recently.

Hi everyone at the Grand Ole Opry! Dolly shared a video on January 7th saying how happy she is that the Opry is celebrating her birthday again this year by performing her songs.

She wished her fans an amazing night, sharing that some of her most cherished moments happened on the Grand Ole Opry stage. Though she couldn’t be there in person, she promised to send them all her love.

Dolly hasn’t been seen at many public events recently, including the honorary Oscar ceremony in November. This started after she put her Las Vegas show on hold in September because of health issues, and she hasn’t said exactly why she’s been absent.

As someone who keeps a close eye on what’s happening with celebrities, I have to say, it was a bit worrying to see Dolly Parton’s sister, Freida, recently share that she’d been up all night praying for Dolly. It came just a week after the news about changes to Dolly’s concert plans, and naturally, it got a lot of people concerned about what might be going on.

In an October Facebook post, Freida shared that Dolly hasn’t been feeling well recently. She expressed confidence in Dolly’s strength and the power of everyone’s prayers, believing she will recover fully. Freida lovingly signed off, sending Dolly her best wishes and letting her know she is deeply loved by all.

Following concerns about her well-being, the country music star—who lost her husband of almost sixty years, Carl Dean, in March—addressed her fans to reassure them she was doing okay.

Dolly addressed recent concerns about her health in a video posted to Instagram. While filming content for the Grand Ole Opry, she playfully asked if she looked sick, emphasizing she was feeling well and working hard. She wanted to reassure anyone worried, expressing gratitude for their concern and prayers, which she values as a person of faith and always welcomes.

She wanted to reassure everyone that she was doing alright, despite some ongoing challenges. She explained that after her husband, Carl, had a long illness and eventually passed away, she hadn’t prioritized her own well-being and had neglected important things.

Dolly mentioned she’d had some minor procedures, but stressed they weren’t serious.

She explained that after finally seeing the doctor, they discussed several health concerns. However, she wanted to assure everyone she wasn’t terminally ill.

Read on to look back at Dolly through the years, including her love story with Carl. 

I’ve always been such a Dolly Parton fan, and I just learned something new about her! Apparently, when she left home for Nashville in ’64, right after high school, she’d actually just ended things with two boyfriends back in Sevierville, Tennessee. So, a new romance was honestly the furthest thing from her mind at the time – she was focused on chasing her dreams!

She first encountered Carl Dean on the day she moved to Nashville, while simply walking to the laundromat.

According to Parton, Dean—who passed away on March 3, 2025, at 82 and always avoided speaking to reporters—shouted from his white Chevrolet, “You’re gonna get sunburnt out here, little lady!”

In her 2020 book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, she wrote that they started talking and quickly fell in love. She also remembered in an interview how much taller and tanner Dean was when they first met – he was 6-foot-2 and she was only 5 feet tall. At 22, he worked with his father in asphalt paving, which gave him a naturally bronzed appearance from being outdoors.

Okay, so everyone thinks she just jumped in his car, but she was smart about it! She told me – well, Stephen Miller wrote it in her biography, Smart Blonde, but it’s like she told him – that you have to know someone before getting in their car, you know? She didn’t want to end up on some back road! But she did let him visit her at her aunt and uncle’s place the next day, though she made him sit outside with her. And get this – he came back every single day for a whole week! It was so sweet. For their first real date, he drove her to his parents’ house first because he told her he knew the moment he saw her that she was the one! Isn’t that just the cutest thing ever? I’ve read that part of her story a million times, and it still gives me chills!

As her songwriting career began to flourish, especially through collaborations with her uncle Bill Owens, who was also her boss at Combine Music, Fred Foster cautioned her against getting married. He feared it would jeopardize her rising career as a singer and the success she was about to achieve.

Rather than wait, she and Dean – who had been planning a large wedding – decided to get married immediately. They eloped to Ringgold, Georgia, on May 30, 1966, with only the bride’s mother, Avie Lee Parton, present to witness the ceremony and take their wedding photos.

Foster had no idea his colleagues were married for an entire year. The record label executive finally let it slip – while celebrating Parton’s rising popularity – with a teasing question: “Don’t you feel better now that they didn’t tie the knot?”

Dolly Parton, known for singing “Jolene,” has said that although her legal name is Dolly Parton Dean, she decided to keep using her birth name professionally. She already had a recording contract under ‘Dolly Parton’ when she got married, so she didn’t need to change it for her career.

She jokingly told The Guardian in 2014 that if she’d gone by the name Dolly Dean, people would have called her ‘Double D’ – a reference to her famous bust size.

Dolly Parton did bring her husband to the 1966 BMI Awards banquet, where both she and Roy Owens were recognized for writing the country song “Put It Off Until Tomorrow.”

As they were leaving, Dean immediately began taking off his tuxedo. Dolly Parton recalls him saying, ‘I’m glad you’re happy, and I want you to follow your dreams. But please don’t ever ask me to attend another event like that, because I won’t.’ He’s kept his word ever since.

This award marked the beginning of a remarkable collection for her, with a total of 48 BMI Awards, 10 Grammys (plus a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011), nine Country Music Association Awards, and thirteen Academy of Country Music Awards – alongside many other honors.

But the real prize was always waiting for Parton at home.  

When people ask me the secret to a happy and long-lasting marriage, I always joke and say, ‘Stay gone!,'” the 9 to 5 star told People magazine in 2018. “But there’s actually some truth to that. I do travel quite a bit, and that makes the time we do spend together really special – it’s all about enjoying the simple things.”

Dolly Parton remembers one of their first dates being at a McDonald’s drive-thru in her husband’s Chevy. Throughout their relationship, they kept things simple, even though Dolly’s net worth was estimated at $440 million by Forbes in 2023. They continued to enjoy local restaurants and often took road trips, with Ringgold, where they got married, being a favorite destination.

Dolly Parton shared in 2014 that she enjoys simple pleasures like reading and cooking. She especially loves traveling with her husband in their RV. Even after long tours, she’s eager to hit the road again, while her husband sometimes needs convincing! She describes herself as a free spirit and says life feels much calmer away from the public eye.

Though if you wanted to catch her and Dean at Publix or Walmart, you had to stay up late.

Dolly Parton shared that she used to go shopping in the middle of the night at stores that were always open. She explained to reporters in 2019, while celebrating the launch of her Netflix series Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, that she was surprisingly successful at finding what she needed. While she enjoys being around people, she prefers to shop quickly without getting stopped and chatting.

Fans have long wondered about Dolly Parton’s husband because there aren’t many public photos of them together. As she explained in her 2020 book, this has even led some people to believe he’s not real! However, the singer has occasionally shared older photos of the two of them.

She playfully featured her husband on the cover of her 1969 album, My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy. The image combined a picture of Parton lost in thought with a depiction of her handsome partner, dressed in a lumberjack shirt.

Parton understood Dean didn’t like being in the public eye, so she made sure to protect his privacy as much as she could.

She explained to Entertainment Tonight in 2020 that he’s a very private person and worried becoming famous would mean losing all his privacy—and she believes he was right about that.

For their 50th anniversary, Parton and her husband renewed their vows at home, and she finally had the chance to wear the beautiful wedding dress she’d always dreamed of. To mark the occasion, she wrote a song called “Forever Love,” which appeared on her 2016 album, Pure and Simple. The album featured several songs inspired by their lasting love story.

She described their second wedding day to Rolling Stone, saying she wore a stunning gown and made sure her husband looked like a classic Hollywood star. They kept the celebration small and intimate with close family and friends. They intentionally avoided a large or stressful event, opting instead for a simple, carefully planned ceremony at their home chapel, and just enjoyed themselves.

In addition to being asked about the keys to a happy marriage, Dolly Parton also received many questions about why she and her husband, Dean, never had children.

You know, for a long time I actually felt like I should be sad about not having kids. When Carl and I first started dating, and then when we got married, we just kinda figured it would happen naturally. We weren’t taking any precautions, and honestly, we thought we would! We even had names picked out, can you believe it? But it just wasn’t meant to be. Now, I’ve realized it’s okay, and I even tell people that maybe God had a bigger plan – that He wanted me to be a mother to everyone’s children. It just feels right now.

She told The Guardian that if they had a daughter, they would have named her Carla. She and Dean often wondered what their children would have been like.

Oh my gosh, Dolly said something so heartbreaking! She was talking about how she always thought she’d be an amazing mom, and honestly, I totally get it. She said she’d have sacrificed everything for her kids, which, like, of course she would! But it’s so sad because she admitted she’d probably have felt terrible leaving them to pursue her career, and she thinks she wouldn’t have become a star if she’d chosen motherhood. It just makes me feel so much for her, knowing she might have given up her dreams for her kids, and that’s just… everything.

But as the fourth of 12 siblings, she has had plenty of people in her life to dote on.

I’m incredibly close to my family – for many years, five of my younger siblings lived with my husband, Carl, and me – and we have a strong bond with our nieces and nephews,” she shared with Billboard. “Now that Carl and I are getting older, we often joke about how lucky we are that we didn’t have children, because that means we don’t have kids to worry about now.”

Which also left more time to focus on each other.

One of the things I absolutely adore about my husband is how he always knows how to make me feel special. Every spring, when those first yellow daffodils pop up – even if there’s still a bit of snow on the ground – he brings me a little bouquet. And he’ll write me a sweet little poem to go with them! Honestly, those small gestures mean the world to me; it feels like a perfect date all on its own. It’s truly priceless.

They found joy in simple moments, whether it was a cozy dinner at home or a basic overnight stay on the road – as long as the essentials were covered, like a clean bed and a bathroom. They were happiest just being themselves and enjoying life together.

Although Dean never attended events like the Grammys or Oscars, Dolly Parton is almost always fully made up – she even wears mascara to bed! – and doesn’t need a special occasion to look glamorous. Because of this, Dean often saw his wife looking her best.

She explained that she always makes an effort to look her best for him, because she doesn’t want to appear lazy or unkempt at home. However, she added that he generally doesn’t mind what she wears, as long as she’s feeling good and he loves her for who she is.

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2026-01-10 00:52