In the mid-1900s, Gary Cooper was the man to cast in Hollywood films. However, while the man might have been a skilled actor, he got up to plenty behind the scenes too. Gary Cooper was a man who knew how to succeed in film. He took on roles that appealed to all manner of audiences, and never lost the charm that made him so likable. That’s why he had such an illustrious career, even if it was filled with scandal…

In many people’s eyes, Gary Cooper was an American hero. That’s because so many of the characters he played fit this persona. In all but one of his roles, Cooper was the protagonist who came out on top and got the girl in the process. He featured in successful releases like Meet John Doe and High Noon, among 80 other feature films. Men wanted to be him while women wanted to be with him – life was great. Or was it?

The actor started life as Frank Cooper, a man intent on studying agriculture. However, when his parents moved to Los Angeles, everything changed for the young farmer. He looked to become an actor, and that’s when the name alteration came about. His agent warned him against using the name Frank and suggested he go for Gary instead. At the time, no one else had that as a first name, though it was a different story once Cooper became famous.

As with most actors, things started out relatively quietly for Gary Cooper. Of course, it was the era of silent films, so that perhaps wasn’t surprising. He appeared in a selection of movies as an extra, waiting for the opportunity to get his big break. It eventually came about in 1926, though not in the way he’d expected. He landed one of the male leads in The Winning of Barbara Worth when the intended actor never showed up.

The roles started racking up from there. He was cast in many more films, primarily playing romantic heroes for movies like Wings and The Wolf Song. Clara Bow, an actress who epitomized the status of being an “it girl” in the twenties, was so enamored by Cooper she demanded he appear alongside her in a film. Her insistence bagged the actor the lead role and likely started off his alleged love for getting closer than close to his co-stars.

It’s no shock that Gary Cooper was so successful as a romantic hero given he had quite a way with the ladies. The man apparently couldn’t help himself when he was around an attractive woman, and he knew exactly what to say to charm them. It helped that he was regularly cast as the protagonist alongside some of Hollywood’s most glamorous leading ladies. Nearly everyone that caught his eye said yes to Cooper, although this wasn’t always without issue.

Gary Cooper was such a ladies man that he allegedly had no qualms about seeing multiple women at the same time. Nearly every time he had a new co-star, he was tempted to get her in his bed. However, that didn’t always mean he wanted to break things off with the other women he was seeing. Of course, having relations with so many leading ladies at the same time was bound to come back to bite him, especially when he met Lupe Vélez.

Cooper and Vélez met on the set of The Wolf Song, and once again on-screen passion turned into something behind the scenes. At the time their romance was blossoming, the actor was finding success in movies that weren’t silent, helping him become an even bigger star. The onset of the Great Depression changed the landscape of Hollywood films, and Cooper used that to his advantage to cement himself as a cinematic icon. It had consequences, though.

Cooper’s popularity meant he was cast in bigger and better films, all of which had successful actresses as the female lead. That wasn’t something that appealed to Vélez, with the woman’s intense jealousy made her determined to try and derail Cooper’s career. Things were particularly dramatic in the early ‘30s when the actor starred alongside Marlene Dietrich in Morocco. It was Dietrich’s first American picture, and her arrival brought plenty of drama into Cooper’s life both on and off set…

Smitten with Cooper, Dietrich wanted a piece of the actor. However, Vélez was not interested in sharing her man, and a bitter rivalry allegedly developed between the two women. While Dietrich remained a professional, her adversary was reportedly not so dignified. In the eyes of the media, she was a loose cannon who couldn’t control herself where Gary was involved. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep hold of her man, even if he ended up getting hurt.

At the same time as this drama went on, Cooper was having his own problems in front of the camera. He took issue with the way the director, Josef von Sternberg, was portraying Dietrich as superior to him. Many shots of Cooper were passive compared to the German actress, and the actor was so upset he went over Sternberg’s head to the bigwigs at Paramount. Soon enough, the man got his way and stopped the director in his tracks.

Another actress who Cary Cooper was rumored to have had an affair with during this time period was Carole Lombard, who he start alongside in the 1931 movie I Take This Woman. Apparently, during her marriage with fellow Golden Age star Clark Gable, Lombard claimed to have much better intimate experiences with Cooper than with husband Gable. In fact, the Gone With The Wind star ended up buying a Duesenberg car that was a whole foot longer than Cooper’s car.

Another reported affair Cooper had during this uncertain time period was in 1932, when he spent a year away from home. It is believed that the actor spent plenty of time at Villa Madama, close to Rome. This was the home of Countess Dorothy di Frasso, who was the American wife of an important Italian figure. According to Tallulah Bankhead, who also had a soft spot for Cooper, she claimed that the Countess had “worn Cooper to a frasso.”

While Cooper might have turned things in his favor in front of the camera, things were far from great behind the scenes. Vélez had become so fiercely possessive of the actor that she apparently lost it at just the slightest indication of Cooper’s infidelity. She was so paranoid that she even suspected her partner of carrying on with another man. Vélez believed he was behaving inappropriately with his friend Anderson Lawler and went to extreme lengths to prove it.

It’s believed that the actress pulled down Cooper’s pants zipper at a party and smelled him, claiming she caught a whiff of Lawler’s cologne. This wasn’t the only outrageous behavior she supposedly exhibited as a result of her infatuation. Vélez also allegedly shot her partner during a passionate moment too. Understandably, things between her and Cooper didn’t last much longer after that. Thankfully for the actor, there were plenty of other fish waiting in the sea.

Determined to get the last word, Vélez made claims about Cooper’s performance in the bedroom that likely bruised his ego. She suggested he had the best equipment in Hollywood, but he had no idea how to use it. Given the actor’s many other partners never showed any disappointment with his performance, it’s hard to say if there was any truth in Vélez’s statement. Women wanted to be with Cooper so badly that it became the sole reason they moved to Hollywood.

The actor’s relationship with Vélez might have been packed with drama, but at least their union wasn’t going behind anyone’s back. The same can’t be said for Cooper’s affair with Patricia Neal, which he embarked on after marrying Veronica Balfe. Gary had tried to calm things down after getting married, but he found himself enamored with the actress after starring alongside her in Fountainhead. This was a rollercoaster relationship that wasn’t destined to have a happy ending.

Funnily enough, Cooper didn’t actually think much of Neal when he first met her. During her audition, her performance wasn’t up to par, leaving the actor incredibly disappointed. Director King Vidor had been excited about her potential, but Cooper was desperate for him to let her go. However, his opinion soon changed when she returned for a second audition the following day. The pair ended up working together, and sparks quickly flew between them, prompting the affair.

For months, the two saw one another behind his wife’s back. It wasn’t until Neal and Balfe were in the same room together that Cooper’s wife realized something was going on. She discovered the truth later that day, prompting her and her daughter to launch a vicious campaign against her husband’s mistress. All the while, Balfe continued to play the doting wife in public, even though she couldn’t stand what Cooper had done behind closed doors.

Everything came to a head after Neal revealed that she was pregnant with Cooper’s child. Realizing they couldn’t raise it together, the actor booked her an appointment at the doctor’s to have it terminated. There was no going back for the pair after that. Patricia ended things, and Cooper worked on building bridges with his family. When Neal later tried to reunite with him, she was rejected, leading her to apparently nearly suffer from a breakdown.

Another high-profile star who Cooper ended up having an affair with was Ingrid Bergman, who is, of course, best known for her role in Casablanca. The star duo hit it off while working on the production of the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls during the summer of 1942. For a whole year, Cooper and Bergman managed to keep their “forbidden love” under wraps, before bringing things to an end when Saratoga Trunk wrapped up in 1943.

Following the breakdown of Cooper’s affair, the man’s health took a turn for the worst. It’s unknown whether the stress of what he went through with Neal contributed, but it likely didn’t help. As his condition deteriorated and he faced the prospect of losing his life, the actor was at least grateful to have one man by his side – Ernest Hemingway. Despite their conflicting political affiliations, the pair were firm friends, regularly shooting and fishing together.

Another major part of Cooper’s life during this time was his daughter, Maria Veronica Cooper. While he had so many complicated relationships over the years, Maria was one woman who Gary Cooper had a straightforward dynamic with. He was her father, and taught her valuable skills such as riding horses, riding a bicycle and being a good person. It seems like she also had an artistic side to her like her father too. On face value, Gary, Veronica, and Maria were a happy family…

If you were an outsider looking in, it appeared that Gary Cooper and his family were like peas and carrots. A lot of the time, the trio were inseparable, with the family going away together on many occasions. They went on getaways to holiday homes in Southampton, New York, as well as going on vacations in Sun Vallery, Idaho. They even went to Europe from time to time. However, this was only scratching the surface of what was going on underneath…

With so many affairs and scandals, it was virtually impossible for Gary Cooper to maintain a stable family life. On May 16, 1951, he separated from Veronica and moved out of the family home. This drew a wedge between Maria and her two parents as she was often forced to choose a side and on many occasions, would side with neither. It seemed like there was no way of coming back from this. However, this certainly was not the end of this rollercoaster ride of a family saga…

It seemed like all hope was lost in terms Gary Cooper have any chance of bringing his family back together. Two years later though, the actor eventually moved back into the family home. Amazingly, after everything they had been through, Gary and Veronica formally reconciled the year after that. A truly remarkable turn of events. Nevertheless more and more rumors just kept on coming about affairs that Cooper had with other women over the years…

Even though Veronica was married to Gary Cooper for the rest of his life, this did not stop the Hollywood superstar staying stuck in his philandering ways. As time went on, more and more rumors started to crop up about affairs he was having with other women, especially during his three years apart from Veronica. These included the likes of Lorraine Chanel, Grace Kelly, and Gisele Pascal, to name a few. Make no mistake about it though, romance was not the only fascinating detail about Cooper during this time…

Cooper’s interest in politics was something that followed him throughout his life, though he never imagined it would get him in trouble with the FBI. It wasn’t his actual political beliefs that got him investigated, though, but rather those of a character he played. His portrayal of Robert Jordan was apparently so convincing, South American communists used it to help with their cause. This led to reports of Cooper holding communist rallies, hence why the FBI got involved.

While the actor was certainly never involved with any communist rallies, the mix up was a testament to Cooper’s skill on screen. His talent came so naturally, and it charmed millions of people across America. However, even his adoring public didn’t realize just how much Cooper put into his acting. He was so devoted to his job that he lifted up his co-star Grace Kelly numerous times while filming High Noon, despite the fact his back was in severe agony.

Even though he couldn’t even bend down to pick up a pencil, Cooper was determined to keep filming. That’s how much he loved his job. There wasn’t a movie he didn’t give his all for, although there’s perhaps one he regretted not doing. When asked to play the lead in Gone with the Wind, Cooper refused, stating it was going to be the biggest flop in cinematic history. Evidently, he got things wrong and looked like a complete fool afterward.

Whatever you think about the man, there is no denying that Gary Cooper was a prolific actor, both from a commercial and a critical standpoint. Whenever awards season came around, you could rest assured that Cooper would be in with a chance of winning something. He ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in both High Noon and Sergeant York. Then, in 1961, the year he passed away, Cooper received an Academy Honorary Award, honoring everything he had achieved in his career.

One of the last women who Gary Cooper was linked with before he passed away in 1961 was a woman by the name of Irene. She was a costume designer and she had gone on the record saying that Cooper was “the only man she ever loved.” Sadly though, Irene ended up making the headlines for the wrong reasons. Just a year after Cooper passed away, Irene died in tragic circumstances, falling out of a window. Apparently, she told Doris Day that she was devastated about his passing.

While Cooper ate his words after Gone with the Wind’s success, he probably wasn’t kicking himself too hard over passing up on the film. After all, one look at his career makes it clear he did incredibly well for himself. Cooper is an icon of Hollywood cinema, and for several decades he was the man of the moment. He’ll always be remembered for his contributions to the film industry, though his backstage antics will be pretty hard to forget too.

Dolly Parton is one of country music’s most beloved stars. Her success can be seen as emblematic of the American Dream, given her rural upbringing in a large family with little means in the mountains of Tennessee. One of Dolly Parton’s lesser known accomplishments, however, is her long-lasting marriage to the ever elusive Carl Dean. Their love story is far from unusual, except for the part where she’s a public figure, and he seemed to lead a mundane life away from the spotlight. Somehow, they’ve figured out a way to keep their relationship going. After years of speculation, Dolly is finally opening up about the secret to their success.

As excited as both the Partons and the Deans were for their children, Dolly would have to deflate their joy when her label called and gave her instructions as to how they wanted her wedding to play out.

Given that she was on the verge of releasing her debut album, the executives didn’t want her wedding to be a distraction from the work they’d done cultivating their image. Dolly was eager to please, but wouldn’t be deterred just yet.

Dolly Parton is rarely seen with her husband by her side, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been behind the scenes for the majority of her career.

Parton and her husband, Carl Dean have been married for more than 50 years, but getting to that milestone hasn’t always been an easy road to travel. In her recently released book, Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton, she shared some surprising revelations about her long-lasting relationship.

Dolly Parton moved to Nashville the moment she graduated high school, and it seemed fate was on her side. The day after she moved, she happened to meet and fall in love with a handsome stranger who spotted her doing laundry at the Wishy Washy Laundromat.

He was concerned that she would get a sunburn in her revealing clothing and saw fit to tell her so. Dolly said she immediately noticed he was looking at her face first, and the couple quickly fell in love.

Dolly Parton was enchanted by the tall, good-looking stranger who seemed so worried about her creamy skin. The attraction went more than skin deep, however, as Dolly found herself “surprised and delighted” that he was looking at her while they chatted, rather than just her body.

The “rare thing for me,” she said—and “seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”

Despite their youth, Dolly was only 18 and Carl 21, the young lovers became nearly inseparable after their happenstance introduction.

At the same time, Dolly’s music career was quickly picking up, and it seemed like she was on the fast track to success. Dolly signed with her first label shortly after her arrival in Music City, but she didn’t realize just how much she would be asked to sacrifice by the executives in order to get her dreams off of the ground.

The notoriously private Carl Dean finally shared his side of the story with regards to what it was like to meet Dolly.

He released a statement in honor of his anniversary last year that read, “My first thought was I’m gonna marry that girl. My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin’. And that was the day my life began.” Dean had been driving past the laundromat in his pickup truck when he saw Dolly, and just knew he had to speak to her.

Dolly revealed, “Everyone at my label had invested money in me and in building my career, so they asked me if I’d wait a year to get married. And I didn’t want to not do what I was supposed to do. Carl’s mother was just heartbroken.”

Dolly and Carl were eager to tie the knot, and in the end, decided that they couldn’t wait an entire year before they got married. Though the affair wasn’t what they’d envisaged, it became a fond memory.

There’s no doubt Dolly has always, and still is leading a life full of accomplishments, both personal and professional, that she can definitely be proud of.

But despite taking pride in being completely open with her fans, there’s one thing miss Parton has made sure to keep to herself. This involved her husband, and it’s something that many fans, and even people she knows personaly, may be surprised by.

Dolly and Carl were ready to get engaged as Dolly’s career was beginning to ramp up. Parton told CMT News about the moment they told Dean’s parents about their engagement.

“When Carl and I told his mother that we were getting married, she was so excited that she was finally gonna get to do a wedding. Because her only daughter had eloped. So she was so happy she would get to throw a big wedding party.”

Dolly and Carl weren’t going to be dissuaded from tying the knot so easily. The pair decided to head over to Georgia, in order to keep the local media in Tennessee at bay.

Parton took only her mother with her, but once they arrived, she found she needed one extra touch to make the union feel real. It was Memorial Day 1966, and the pair had been together for two years. It seemed to be a now or never moment.

Dolly has finally divulged the details of her secret wedding to CMT, saying, “My mother made me a little white dress and a little bouquet. But I said, ‘I can’t get married in a courthouse because I’ll never feel married.'”

She continued, “So we found a little Baptist church in town, and went up to Pastor Don Duvall and said, ‘Would you marry us?’ We got pictures on the steps right outside the church.” It wasn’t what she imagined, but then again, neither was marriage itself.

As Dolly’s profile in the country music world began to grow, she had to contend with how her husband felt about her professional goals. Shortly after their nuptials, Carl Dean joined Dolly for an event that included a red carpet.

He suited up for the engagement, but on the way home, he supposedly told her, “Dolly, I want you to have everything you want, and I’m happy for you, but don’t you ever ask me to go to another one of them dang things again!”

Dolly Parton may have been a star in the making when she met her husband, but despite her long-held dreams of fame and fortune, there was a time in her life when her dreams seemed to be no more than a fantasy. The Southern beauty was born and raised in Tennessee.

However, that’s about all her life today has in common with her past. Given her upbringing in the backwoods of the Smoky Mountains, her success couldn’t have been more surprising.

Dolly Parton had no illusions of living a charmed life. She was born the fourth child into a family of small-time farmers, who would go on to have 12 children total. In recent days, Dolly has been more forthright about just how difficult her childhood was.

For starters, her parents were so poor, they allegedly paid the doctor for Dolly’s birth with a bag of cornmeal. She didn’t know it, but she would have a long road to travel.

Parton and her family lived together in a one-room cabin. Dolly has been candid about the difficulties they faced, given that their home not only had to accommodate 14 people, but they had no electricity or running water. Oftentimes, the only respite the family had from the crushing stone of poverty was music and religion.

It was in church that Dolly first discovered her voice, like many other country stars, but breaking out of the backwoods would not be an easy task.

In 2015, Dolly wrote a tribute to her late father, who had passed in 2000, in celebration of the ways he influenced her life. She explained how though they were poor, and her father nearly broke his back trying to provide for the family, the children never lacked for gratitude.

In fact, they easily recognized just how hard he was working, and she said they’d fight over the opportunity to wash his feet and rub them with corn silk lotion.

Dolly also recalled the important of her father’s ‘dinner bucket.’ Lee Parton would leave the house every day with a green tin lunchbox in hand every single day, but no matter how hard he was working, she said he would always save a portion of his lunch for his hungry children back at home.

She shared that it may have only been a bite of pie or a sandwich, or sometimes even just a piece of bologna, but the kids all cherished those morsels.

Without modern comforts that were afforded to more affluent areas, even in the 1950s when Dolly was growing up, the family had to make do with whatever they could find. There was no such thing as television in the Parton household, but the children and their parents, Robert and Avie, managed to entertain themselves.

Most exciting of all was when Dolly’s father came into a battery, which allowed the family to huddle together and listen to country music on the radio now and again.

Though Dolly has made light of her poverty-stricken childhood, some of her stories are no laughing matter. She shared that in order to bathe, they’d use the river in the summer, but in the winter, it was simply too cold, and they’d have to heat a pan over the fire.

Dolly shared that her siblings often wet the bed, which she learned to appreciate when it was the only source of warmth they had, though it caused her to bathe often in the winter.

As Dolly’s 53rd wedding anniversary creeps ever nearer, she’s continued to expand on how to keep the spark alive after all that time. In a recent interview, she exclaimed, “I always joke and laugh when people ask me what’s the key to my long marriage and lasting love. I always say ‘Stay gone!’ and there’s a lot of truth to that.”

All of the time they spend apart makes them appreciate their quiet moments together even more.

Dolly’s early talent was recognized by both her parents and her uncle, who noticed the youngster was already composing music on a homemade guitar. Her first song was written about her corncob doll, the only toy she could muster in such harsh economic conditions.

Dolly’s uncle could see her passion and kickstarted her career by buying her a real guitar a few years later. If not for him, she may never have had the opportunity to become the star she is now.

It was Bill Owens, one of Dolly’s uncles on her mother’s side who began to push for the young songwriter to consider a professional career. Dolly recalled the time he drove her in his rickety car all the way to Louisiana so they could record a song they wrote together, called “Puppy Love” for a local radio station.

Dolly reminisced about having to sleep in his car, but it seems the experience would all be worth it in the end.

There’s nothing quite like the thrill of hearing your first single on the radio, and the experience was no different for Dolly. She was only 12 when “Puppy Love” was released, and couldn’t have been more excited when she finally heard her voice ringing out over the radio waves.

She revealed in an interview to The Guardian, “The radio was across the room and I almost killed myself, slipping in the mop water, trying to turn the volume up.”

Before Dolly made it as a big star, she had the chance to sing on the hallowed stage of the Grand Ole Opry. At that time, Dolly finally had an opportunity to hear some of the biggest country stars sing live, and there was one who she found particularly impressive.

In those early years, the impressionable girl found herself quite taken by Johnny Cash. “He had this tick when he moved his shoulder,” she said, “and it was still sexy. It still got to me.”

It seems unsurprising that Dolly’s favors her famed over the top looks given the kind of deprivation she experienced in her youth, though some of her grandiose style seems to have been inherited by her mother. She shared that her mother’s guilty pleasure was looking at catalogs.

She would say that these “wishbooks” as they called them “[m]ade you wish you had things you didn’t have. I wanted fancy clothes, I wanted jewelry, I wanted to be pretty.”

Despite the hardships Dolly endured as a child, her sense of humor always seems to shine through, even when discussing just how little they had. “You know they always talk about two rooms and a bath?” Parton joked about her childhood.

“We had two rooms and a path.” She continued to add, “We’d have running water when we’d run to get it. We didn’t have any electricity. If fireflies were out, we’d catch them in a mason jar and put them in our bedroom.”

Long after Dolly Parton had become a household name, she wrote about some of the experiences she had as a child in some of her songs. One of the best known perhaps is ‘Coat of Many Colors.’

It might sound like an homage to Joseph’s famously vibrant coat in the bible, which it is, but Dolly shared that it was also a reference to how her mom would make clothes for the kids out of rags and other fabric scraps.

Despite the adversity, Dolly made do with what she could, painting her lips red with a chemical that couldn’t be rubbed off as a young child. By high school, she had climbed her way to the top of the social pyramid, given that she didn’t look all that different than she does now.

With the help of hairspray and some money earned through radio performances, Dolly was already sporting a tall bouffant, which she paired with “clothes so tight she could hardly wiggle in them.”

When Dolly Parton met Carl Dean, she was dressed no differently than she did in high school, and it seemed her loud personality, the very same that drove her towards show business in the first place, impressed him.

Shortly after their marriage, Dolly became a regular on The Porter Wagoner Show. Marriage seemed to be going as well as her career, a rarity in show business, but things were going to start getting rocky in a way the couple never expected.

While Dolly Parton began touring the country as an acclaimed and popular musician, her husband was content to stay in Tennessee and build a decidedly unglamorous business as a road paver. Dean never minded staying home to mind his business while Dolly was off living the glamorous life.

She had told him from the start she wasn’t going to be content living life as a homemaker, which Dean happily accepted. He liked the country life, but he would show his support in different ways.

After Dolly hit it big, there was one thing she really wanted to do, which was purchase her childhood home. Though she wanted to preserve the rustic charm it held when the family lived in deep poverty, she also still thought it should have an update.

“I spent a couple million dollars making it look like I spent $50 on it,” she explained. “Like in the bathroom, I made the bathroom so it looked like an outdoor toilet.”

Dolly’s success has spanned countless hit records and singles, but it also gave her the ability to branch out from just focusing on music. She’s quite possibly the only star, in the United States at least, who has their own theme park.

The park itself is situated not too far from her hometown. There’s just one little problem…Dolly is afraid of riding on roller coasters.“I’ve got too much to lose—like my hair!” she once told USA Today.

As Dolly’s career progressed, many rumors began to spring up about the different sort of work she had done to her body, namely that she was absolutely covered with ink.

Dolly hasn’t been shy about her surgical procedures, so it seems just a little weird that she would go to great lengths to hide tattoos from the public. In truth, Dolly finally divulged that she did have some tattoos in hidden places, which she had gotten done to cover scars.

One of Dolly’s most recognizable characteristics is her shapely silhouette. When she was asked about being teased for the size and shape of her assets, Dolly answered that in the beginning, she was somewhat uncomfortable on what people were focusing their attention on.

Then, she added,  “I realized that it was me showing it off with tight clothes and stuff. So, it don’t bother me as long as it’s in good taste.  If it gets tacky, I don’t respond and that makes them look worse…”

There’s one thing that Dolly has never made a secret of, and that’s her love of surgical fixes. “I try to make positives out of negatives.

I did whatever I needed to build my confidence, and when people don’t believe I had plastic surgery, I say “Yeah, I don’t look old but I have aged my plastic surgeons.” She continued by adding that all of the work she does is to make sure how much she really works doesn’t show.

Dolly’s 1980 film, 9 to 5, which starred the singer along with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda was a massive hit, but surprisingly, they never made a sequel.

Now, she’s revealed why.”I was never willing to do a sequel, because they never came up with anything that was as good as the original. I don’t like to mess with history, you know? But this would be addressing the same issues, and they need to be addressed again and some more, in different ways.”

Dolly may have no plans to stop working, even at 72, but she did say there was one thing that would make her slow down, even just a little bit.

She shared with People, “If my husband needed me, or someone in my family, I would put him first,” she says about her longtime love. “I’ve always put myself first and my career first, but if something were to happen to him, I would pull back on that.”

Though Carl Dean kept his profile low, Dolly and her sister Stella have been vocal about the fact that he’s always there when it matters. He was rarely if ever photographed with his wife, but there was one incident the pair still laugh about.

Parton was doing a concert at a rodeo, and during Carl’s favorite song, “Higher and Higher,” she spotted him onstage, singing with her backup vocalists. As a joke, Dolly alerted security, who almost removed Dean, until they realized who he was.

In the early 1980s, however, Dolly began to struggle with her marriage. While it isn’t clear whether or not their marriage is open, she has recently revealed that she had an emotional affair with another man, which almost drove her off the deep end.

Though Parton hasn’t indicated that she was considering leaving her marriage, she said she was in such personal turmoil, that she found herself in a moment of sheer desperation considering ending her life.

It wasn’t just Dolly’s marriage that was giving her trouble around that time. She also found her normally steady career just wasn’t holding up as well as it once had.

She needed to find a way to reinvigorate her music, which meant turning back to her roots.She brought it all home with “Little Sparrow,” which marked Dolly’s return to the bluegrass sound of her childhood growing up in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.

Dolly recounts how she was holding the weapon she kept for home safety, when she heard her dog, a little French bulldog named Popeye come pattering into the room. “The tap-tap-tap of his paws jolted me back to reality I suddenly froze.

I put the gun down. Then I prayed. I kinda believe Popeye was a spiritual messenger from God” she discloses in her new book. That moment might have been her lowest point, but she wasn’t ready to let go of Dean just yet.

Surprisingly, Dolly’s big hit song, “I Will Always Love You” wasn’t actually written about her husband, which begs the question, who will Dolly always love?

The truth is, the song had no illusion to Dean or the state of their marriage, Dolly simply wrote it as a goodbye to the Porter Wagoner Show. The song has had three record-setting releases, making it the only song to debut at number one on the charts more than once.

Dolly has always been beset by rumors about possible romances that occurred with her costars. When she was working on Best Littler Whorehouse In Texas, whispers floated around that she had gotten involved with Burt Reynolds, despite her later accounts of how horrible he was to work with.

Other famous men she was linked to include Sylvester Stallone, Billy Ray Cyrus, whose daughter Miley is her goddaughter, and Kenny Rogers. Dolly hasn’t confirmed any of the romances, and often states that they were simply platonic.

With all of the rumors swirling, it can be hard to tell if Dolly and Carl are in an open and closed relationship. She has said, “People always ask me if I’ve had extramarital affairs, and you can draw your own conclusions.”

She continued, “He seems to know that I’ll be back, and that love affairs and relationships are just part of my dealings with people.” To add to the confusion, however, she has also said that she only means flirting, not true affairs.

Dolly has another secret that she reserves only for her husband: her tattoos. She has explained that while she is not secretly covered in ink, she has received a couple of tattoos over the years, but in hidden places where only her husband will see them.

Given her flashy sense of style, it’s a little bit surprising that Dolly would be so surreptitious about her body art, especially considering how open she otherwise is about her bodily modifications.

Given Carl Dean’s preference for staying in the shadows, there have always been rumors swirling as to the nature of his and Dolly’s private relationship.

While Dolly is known for her outgoing charm, it was her jealousy over the attention she perceived her husband to be getting that likely inspired one of her best-known songs, “Jolene.” She explained how she’d tease him for going to the bank so often, where a leggy, red-headed teller had a very obvious crush on Dean.

As the years passed, the public never knew what to think about Dolly and her ever elusive husband. New information has surfaced recently that Dolly may have had another dalliance with a different man who was in her close circle in the early 1990s.

According to the Daily Mail, Dean is still angry with his wife about the alleged affair, which supposedly was carried out for six years. Dolly has never confirmed the rumor, but supposedly the tryst ended when she refused to leave Carl.

Given the demands of Dolly’s career, it’s not unusual for her to rely on a trusted assistant in order to get through her day to day life.

Dolly’s assistant, Judy Ogle, has been a close friend since the girls were children, however, their closeness has caused tongues to wag. Some suspect the two women at one point carried out an affair, especially after Dolly revealed that they often shared a bed. “Why scream across the room when you don’t have to?” Dolly explained.

Talk of marital spats are few and far between when it comes to Dolly and Carl, most likely because Carl is so rarely seen in public.

However, there was one incident that came up when Dolly purchased houses in both Hawaii and Los Angeles during the 1980s. Dolly allegedly became upset that Carl refused to visit her new purchases, accusing him that his refusal was a sign he was no longer in love with her. Somehow though, the conflict was smoothed over.

Parton and Dean never had any children of their own, but that wasn’t for a lack of trying. In the 1980s, Dolly Parton had to undergo a partial hysterectomy, which caused her to have to reckon with the fact that she and Dean, who had been married for nearly 20 years at that point, would never have children of their own.

It was a tough blow to the couple, but Dolly shared that there was one thing that had gotten them through the storm.

Dolly Parton’s career was started in the church, so it’s no surprise that she still considers herself to be a very religious person. She opened up that it was her belief that helped her and Dean through those rocky years in the 80s.

For a woman who supposedly awakes in the middle of the night to pray and meditate, she claims her husband is even more religious than she is. However, that’s not the thing that they credit for keeping their marriage alive.

As loud as her husband is shy, Dolly has made no secret of his distaste for the glamorous life. “My husband is a loner,” she explained of Dean.

“He doesn’t particularly care about being around anybody but me. He’s just always asked me to leave him out of all this. He does not like all the hullabaloo.” In fact, she shared that her assistant Judy is one of the few people other than Dolly herself that Carl can stand to be around.

Carl Dean might not be much a traditional romantic, but he certainly knows how to show his love to Dolly in the smallest of ways. She recounts that for one of their earliest Christmases, he gave his wife a stove as a gift, which seems more practical, but is certainly to be appreciated.

She also admitted that he will often leave her little bundles of wildflowers that he collected, along with a poem he wrote for her.

Dolly revealed that her husband has some interesting thoughts about Jennifer Aniston. She claims he is one of his favorites and is so obsessed with her that Dolly believes he fantasizes about them. Aniston was stunned to hear the claim but was flattered none the less.

Dolly and Carl were eager to tie the knot, and in the end, decided that they couldn’t wait an entire year before they got married. Though the affair wasn’t what they’d envisaged, it became a fond memory.

After 50 years of marriage, Parton and Dean decided to renew their vows in the gaudy ceremony they never had. In honor of the occasion, Dolly finally revealed that the secret to their marriage is all the time they spend apart.

He’s as quiet and private as she is outgoing and over the top. She added, “If I had it to do all over, I’d do it all over again, and we did. I’m dragging him kicking and screaming into the next 50 years.”