But coming home to her sprawling property in Brentwood, Tenn., where Dean preferred to stay tinkering in the barn while his wife was on the road, wasn’t the same. 

“It’s worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together,” Parton told E! News of their routine in May 2024. “So the fact that there’s some little space that makes it exciting when you go home.”

“He loves music,” she added, “but he’s not in the music business at all, so we have different things to talk about, his world and my world, and we work really well together. We have a lot of love and respect for each other, and I think the key to all of it—we both have a crazy, warped sense of humor, so we have a lot of fun.”

Meaning, Dean being absent from the public eye for more than half a century—unless you happened to catch him watching his wife perform at a county fair, his kind of venue—was never a sign of trouble in paradise (or Dollywood).

Quite the opposite, in fact.