Stella shared insight on how Dolly kept up her signature glamour even when at home

NEED TO KNOW

• Stella Parton sat down with Gayle King for CBS Mornings and opened up about her sister, the late Dolly Parton who died on Aug. 25 at age 80
• In the interview, Stella revealed that she never saw the country icon without her makeup on, even when they were at home
• Before her death, Dolly shared why she kept up her glam even when she wasn’t making public appearances

Dolly Parton stayed true to who she was from 9 to 5 — make that all hours of the day actually!

Throughout her entire career, the legendary “Jolene” singer — who died on Aug. 25 at age 80 after a “brief battle with cancer” — was committed to her glam routine, which famously included over-the-top makeup. But it wasn’t really an act when Dolly kept up her signature look in private, according to her sister, Stella Parton.

Stella, 77, sat down with Gayle King for a new CBS Mornings interview, during which she revealed that she never saw her older sister without makeup.

“Not after she got to be ‘Dolly Parton.’ No, she would sleep in her makeup when she would come spend the night with me,” she said. “I wouldn’t! I sleep with a pillow over my head.”

King asked Stella if she ever asked her sibling, who also happened to be an 11-time Grammy winner, to “see” her “without your makeup?”

“Oh, I knew what she looked like, of course!” added Stella, who was among Dolly’s 11 brothers and sisters. “Because she looked like me without her makeup, so I knew what she looked like without it.”

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Before her death, Parton talked about embracing her one-of-a-kind sparkle in her personal life.

In a 2023 interview with PEOPLE, she said, “I like to put on a little makeup. I don’t always wear the wigs, but I like to pull my hair up a little bit. Because I never know who’s going to come by or if somebody has to come fix my refrigerator or whatever.” And when explaining why she wears high heels, even at home, she joked, “I’m short, I got to reach my cabinets!”

And while she wanted to look her best for the world and her fans, there was one person in particular that she glitzed up for. “I like to dress up for Carl,” the country star — who married the late Carl Thomas Dean on May 30, 1966 — told E! News’ Daily Pop in 2022. “Every day, I put on some makeup and fix my hair because I think, ‘Well, the whole world, I’m out here and everybody else sees me all dressed up, and I’m not going to just kind of go home and just flop on him.’ ”

“Nobody wants to make out with a slouch!” she kidded, adding, “It’s important to me that I look as good as I can” because that, in part, helped keep things “spicy.”

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