Dolly Parton, 79, dedicated a new song “If You Hadn’t Been There” to her late husband Carl Dean, 82, The Guardian reported.
The singer-songwriter shared a tribute to her husband, who died this
week, by posting a picture of the couple in their youth on Instagram.
In
it, Parton had her arms wrapped around Dean and below their signatures
appear with the words, “Dolly + Carl = [Love].”
She wrote of her
longtime partner of nearly 60 years: “Carl and I fell in love when I was
18 and he was 23, and like all great love stories, they never end. They
live in memory and in song, and I dedicate this to him. If You Hadn’t
Been There.”
The pair first met outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the
very day Parton moved to Nashville at age 18 to pursue music. They later
married in a small ceremony in Georgia in 1966.
In the song, released
on Friday, she sings: “If you hadn’t been there / Where would I be? /
Without your trust / Love and belief / The ups and downs / We’ve always
shared / And I wouldn’t be here / If you hadn’t been there.”
Parton
expressed her love for Dean in a song before, like in her 2012 track
“From Here to the Moon and Back.”
