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Dolly Parton is sharing the key to a successful marriage. The country music icon got candid about her 56-year marriage to husband and Nashville, Tennessee, businessman Carl Thomas Dean.

“I like it when people say, ‘How did it last so long?’ I say, ‘I stay going,’” Parton said during an interview with ET Canada. “You know, there’s a lot to be said about that. So, we’re not in each other’s face all the time. He’s not in the business, so we have different interests, but yet we have the things we love to do together. So it was meant to be, I think. He was the one I was supposed to have and vice versa.”

The sweet couple has been married since 1966. Parton first met Dean when she was 18 and he was 21. Like any relationship, they had a few highs and lows. However, the singer-songwriter revealed a good laugh keeps the spark alive. “We both have a warped sense of humor. And I think humor, honestly, is one of the best things when you’re married like that. Even if you have a problem, if you have a great sense of humor, if you say something you can’t take back [you] usually have some crazy way of getting out of it,” Parton noted, according to the media outlet.

The “Jolene” songstress admitted the pair rarely get into fights and try to keep the peace. “We’ve never had, you know, serious arguments to say bad things to each other we have to take back,” she explained.

 

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Parton added that her husband has always supported her legendary career and teased that she prepared a special gift for him on her upcoming project. “He loves all of the songs. And I haven’t told him yet who I’m going to have on. I don’t even know myself who all is going to be on it. But he’ll love it. I’m doing so many of his favorite songs on the album, so I’ll play it to him when it’s all done.”

The iconic singer shared during an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” that she recorded a top-secret song seven years ago and buried it in a time capsule to be opened in 2045. “You have no idea how that has bothered me,” Parton said. “I wanna go dig that up so bad. It’s a really good song!”

The tune was written and recorded for the 2015 opening of her Dollywood DreamMore resort. The plan is to keep the song in the time capsule until the 30th anniversary of the resort, at which time Parton will be (fingers crossed) 99 years old.

She joked that she didn’t “know whose idea that was.” Parton said, “They weren’t expecting me to be there at all, and I probably won’t be. I might be there; who knows? I figure it’ll probably disintegrate, and nobody will ever hear it; that’s what bothers me – if it rots in there before they open it.” Let’s hope that Dolly Parton and her husband have many more years of happiness and love!

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