Dolly Parton has been married for longer than some people been alive. So she knows a thing or two about a long and successful marriage. So what's the secret to staying married for 50 years?
Videos by Wide Open Country
I'm glad you asked. According to Whiskey Riff, Parton said having separation is key.
She jokingly said, "Yeah, stay gone as much as you can. I've been married 50 years, I've been home about 45 [days] of those, so it works perfect. No, actually, you need to have respect and love for each other, and you need to be good friends too."
Parton's husband has mostly stayed out of the spotlight over the past few decades. Parton explained that he likes his privacy. She said, "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."
Dolly Parton On Marriage
She continued, "He's always been supportive. He's like a brother and a father and a friend and a husband and a lover - all of those things to me. I think he's kind of proud that we've been in it this long!"
Meanwhile, Parton said that they two connected over having a similar kind of humor.
She said, "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."
For Parton, it's very important to have someone in her corner that supports and loves her through the thick of it.
"To have someone there in your corner, and you know they love you for just who you are and not what you do, what other people think you are. And they know you for who you are," she said.
She added, "There's a great comfort in that, knowing that someone loves you exactly for who you are, because he feel in love with me before I became a star. And somebody said, oh, how do you feel about being married to a star? he said, 'I didn't know I was. To him, I'm his star, but he doesn't relate to any of that. He doesn't care about that... well, he's proud of me, I don't mean that, but that's not how he sees me, the way the public sees me."
