Get ready for the mother of all hoedowns. Dolly Parton, Queen of Country and proud possessor of the biggest hairdo – among other things – in showbusiness, will appear on stage next May at a party at her grand Tennessee home.
Friends and family will gather at the 24ha estate outside Nashville – music royalty mixing with her close friends, and even a bit of both in the form of the singer’s goddaughter, oversexed pop star Miley Cyrus.
The bash will mark a very special occasion – Parton’s 50th wedding anniversary and a renewal of her marriage vows – so one guest really has no excuse for not being there.
Carl Thomas Dean, alias Mr Dolly Parton, is set to break a habit of a lifetime and actually appear in public with his wife. He will join the larger-than-life star on a makeshift stage, revealed Cyrus, who added: “Not to sing – just to be there, at her side, in the spotlight.”
It will be a celebration of not only their marriage but of 69-year-old Parton’s remarkable career, rising from deep poverty in rural Tennessee to become one of the world’s most cherished performers and worth the best part of £300 million. For any other showbusiness spouse, even one who prefers to stay out of the limelight, this would not exactly be a great hardship. In the case of Dean, who has probably been photographed fewer times in the past half-century than the Loch Ness Monster, his appearance will be the showbiz equivalent of the discovery of a dodo.
For like the dear old dodo, he has become almost a myth – so elusive that many Dolly fans started to believe he didn’t actually exist.
But he does. Although a blurred photograph of the couple on their wedding day appears in Parton’s 1994 memoirs – one of just three of him among dozens of Dolly. Dean, now 73, hasn’t been photographed with her in public for decades.
Indeed, it is said that little more than 20 photographs have ever been taken of them together, and that even some of Parton’s own aides have never met him.
According to his wife, country boy Carl is as shy and retiring as she is bold and brassy, and made it clear from the start he didn’t want to be part of her professional life. Instead, he stayed at home and ran an asphalt-laying business.
But will he finally emerge from the shadows to appear by her side and celebrate a union that Parton has described as her “first and last” marriage? Even this may be in doubt, as reports recently circulated in the US that he is threatening to call off the party.
According to a magazine, Dean is “furious” because his wife has never got over a six-year affair she had with her former bodyguard.
Dean reportedly “”hit the roof” when he heard rumours that Parton was cheating on him with Mark Kiracofe, a strapping 1.96m man, 11 years his junior.
Kiracofe is said to have first met Parton in 1989 when he worked as one of her stage equipment handlers. Parton promoted him to her head of security and they even co-wrote a 1991 made-for-TV film called Wild Texas Wind in which she played a singer struggling with an abusive manager.
When news of their relationship was first reported in 1996, Parton’s representatives denied any affair. It was claimed that Kiracofe had given Parton an ultimatum to choose between him and her husband. When she refused to leave Dean, Kiracofe reportedly “walked out of her life”.
Kiracofe, now a 62-year-old trade union official, said he had “no comment” on the claims, declining either to confirm or deny them. Parton’s publicist also declined to comment.
Given the fog that envelops Parton’s private life – and her conflicting comments over the years about the exact nature of her marriage, rumours have inevitably swirled that she is hiding something.
It has been claimed – though denied – that she has had flings with actors Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds (her co-star in Best Little Whorehouse In Texas) and fellow country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, father of Miley. A liaison was long rumoured between her and long-time collaborator Kenny Rogers, until he said it had all just been platonic.
Confusingly, at times Parton has suggested she has an open marriage, at others she has flatly denied it. “People always ask me if I’ve had extramarital affairs, and you can draw your own conclusions,” she said once.
And in her 1994 memoirs, she described how her husband would wait loyally at home for her to return from her glamorous travels: “He seems to know that I’ll be back, and that love affairs and relationships are just part of my dealings with people.”
There have been reports of wobbles in their marriage, but in public, however, Parton has been adamant they are a pair of “old mountain goats” who “will be together till one of us dies”.
But in recent years, her relationship with her personal assistant, Judy Ogle who has been a friend from childhood, has been the subject of persistent speculation.
Although Parton insists there has never been any romance between them, she has conceded they are closer than most female friends would feel comfortable being.
In her 1994 autobiography, she said she often shared a bed with Ogle and described their bond as “closer than husband and wife”.
Closer than with her husband, perhaps. When discussing “him indoors”, she doesn’t exactly boil with passion for quiet Dean.
She likes to call him her “tall drink of water” – faithful and loving, who she always knows she can come home to after the stage lights have been turned off and the fans have gone home.
“We’re friends and we’re married,” she said four years ago. “We like each other a lot.”
Daily Mail