“If You Hadn’t Been There”: Dolly Parton pays tribute to late husband Carl Dean with new song

Washington [US], March 7 (ANI): Country singer Dolly Parton has paid a beautiful tribute to her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean, who passed away at 58 earlier this week.

The singer took to her Instagram on Friday to announce her new song, “If You Hadn’t Been There,” which she dedicated to Dean.

Parton shared a throwback picture of her and Dean along with a note for her husband that read, “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’.”

Take a look

Parton and Dean were together for almost six decades. They got married on May 30, 1966, in Ringhold, Georgia, with Parton’s mother in attendance, two years after they began dating, which began when she was 18.

Dean was rarely sighted with her, even in the early years of their marriage, before she became a country-pop and music/screen crossover sensation.

According to Variety, in 2016, in honor of their 50th anniversary, Parton’s website devoted a page to the couple ( including a very rare photo of the two together, with Dean smooching her on the cheek in what appears to be the ’70s or ’80s ), saying they had “enjoyed 50 years of wedded bliss despite facing many of life’s obstacles common to most married couples and plenty of unique challenges all their own.”

Parton’s website said that she wrote the song “From Here to the Moon and Back” with Dean in mind and singled out these lyrics: “From here to the moon and back / Who else in this world will love you like that? / Love everlasting, I promise you that / From here to the moon and back.”