Carl Dean, Dolly Parton's husband and the man behind the hit song "Jolene," died on Monday. He was 82.

"Carl and I had many wonderful years together. Words cannot describe the love we have had for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and condolences," Dolly Parton wrote in a statement.

Dolly Parton met Carl outside a laundromat the day she moved to Nashville, when she was 18.

“I was surprised and happy that, as he spoke to me, he looked me in the face (something rare for me),” Dolly described the meeting. “He seemed genuinely interested in learning who I was and what I liked.”

They married two years later in a small ceremony in Ringgold, Georgia.

Dean, a businessman who owned a Nashville asphalt company, avoided the public eye despite his wife's fame. They kept their relationship private for decades, so much so that Dolly Parton told the Associated Press in 1984:

"A lot of people say there's no such thing as a Carl Dean, that he's just someone I made up to keep others away from me."

Parton's classic hit, "Jolene," a 1973 song, was inspired by Dean. She explained in 2008 that she wrote the song about a bank teller who flirted with her husband and seemed to have an interest in him.

“She had a terrible crush on my husband. And he loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was like a joke between us – I’d say, ‘Hey, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t think we have that much money.’ So, it’s basically a completely innocent song, but it sounds like it’s not.”

Parton also said that her late husband was the inspiration for her 2023 album "Rockstar."