“He was so happy to be in the shadows,” Paisley said of the rarely seen Dean, who married Parton in May 1966

NEED TO KNOW

• Brad Paisley said Carl Dean stayed in the car while Dolly Parton filmed the music video for their 2005 duet “When I Get Where I’m Going” at his house
• Paisley recently performed the song with Sierra Hull at Parton’s Nashville tribute concert
• Parton and Dean married in 1966 and maintained a famously private relationship until his death in 2025

Carl Dean was a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.

On Wednesday, Oct. 21, Brad Paisley appeared on the Rolling Stone Nashville Now podcast and recalled working on the music video for “When I Get Where I’m Going” with the late Dolly Parton. At the time, she arrived at his house with her husband — and he patiently waited in the car for her.

“Carl Dean, her husband, was just so happy to be in the shadows. She was in here a while. We walked around and talked in the house and had a great day,” Paisley, 53, recalled.

“And she went out to get in the car, and I see him waving. He didn’t even come in! He was just so happy to drive her around. And she got in the car, and she drove away,” he continued.

Paisley and Parton, who died on Aug, 25 at age 80, recorded “When I Get Where I’m Going” for 2005’s Time Well Wasted. At Parton’s tribute concert in Nashville, billed CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton, Paisley performed the song with Sierra Hull.

“Dolly would do anything she believed in,” the “She’s Everything” singer said on the podcast. “When I cut [‘When I Get Where I’m Going’], I said, ‘I’m cutting this, but I need something that takes it into the angelic realm,’ and so I sent it to Dolly and said, ‘Would you sing this with me?’ She wrote back, ‘Absolutely.’”

Parton and Dean got married in 1966 and were together until his death in March 2025.

In September, Parton’s sister Stella said in an interview with CBS Mornings that the “9 to 5” singer and Dean had a “sweet, private romance.”

She also said that Dean “loved [Dolly] enough to let her be what she was,” but suggested that he may have preferred things to be a bit different when it came to their lives.

“He would rather her be at the house with her hair up in a ponytail and barefooted, cookin’ in the kitchen and just, you know, messin’ around the house,” she said. “That’s, I think, that’s what he would have preferred.”

In a cover story interview with PEOPLE in November 2025, Parton said Dean always supported her from the sidelines.

“My husband was very independent, and he liked being alone. He didn’t really care about being with anybody but me,” Parton continued. “He had a few friends, but he loved being on the farm and doing his thing. He was kind of a loner, which worked out best for us.”

In 2015, Parton told PEOPLE that part of what kept them together was that they were so different.

“They say that opposites attract and it’s true,” she said. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me.”

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