Tennessee
Saints and singers
'Mr. & Mrs. Carl Dean.” The black-and-white picture of the…
Dolly Parton, who had ties to Churches of Christ, dies at 80
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‘Mr. & Mrs. Carl Dean.”
The black-and-white picture of the newlywed couple appeared in a 1966 directory of the Radnor Church of Christ in Nashville.
A portrait of Carl Dean and his wife, Dolly Parton, from a 1966 church directory.
Mrs. Dean, who met her future husband on the day she moved to Music City after her 1964 high school graduation, was better known as country music superstar Dolly Parton. Her family announced her passing Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, at age 80. Carl Dean died March 3, 2025, at 82.
The entertainment icon talked about her little-known — and apparently brief — connection to Churches of Christ in her 2020 book “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.”
“I loved my husband’s mother. She was very sweet, and we were like best friends. Her name was Virginia, but everybody called her Ginny,” Parton wrote concerning her mother-in-law, who died from cancer at age 71 in 1991. “Carl’s mother was very religious. She was in church every Wednesday and every Sunday morning.
Related: Saints and singers
“The Deans were Church of Christ people. They don’t believe in having any instruments in their church; they just use their voices,” added Parton, who wrote her 1971 song “Lord Hold My Hand” with Ginny Dean. “Ginny had this big, beautiful, ‘church’ kind of voice. Very proper. It sounded totally different from our ‘Holy Roller’ church back home.”
Read The Christian Chronicle’s 2021 feature on the couple’s connection to Churches of Christ.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at [email protected].
