After nearly 60 years of marriage, Dolly Parton knows a thing or two about getting along and making things work. She met her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, at a laundromat when she was just 18 years old. Dean was 21. Parton had just moved to Nashville to start her career when she decided to check out her new home. “I was in such a hurry to get here — and after I’d put my clothes in the machine, I started walkin’ down the street, just lookin’ at my new home, and this guy hollered at me, and I waved. Bein’ from the country, I spoke to everybody. And he came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband,” she recalled to The New York Times. Dean was instantly smitten. “My first thought was I’m gonna marry that girl,” he told ET of their first meeting. “My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’ And that was the day my life began.” The two hit it off and two years later, the couple eloped with just Parton’s mother in attendance. At the time, Parton’s manager advised against her getting married, thinking it would make promoting herself harder. The two have kept a relatively low profile during Parton’s decades-spanning career, with Dean content to let Parton have all the spotlight.

One aspect that makes their marriage work is humor, according to Parton. “He’s quiet and I’m loud, and we’re funny. Oh, he’s hilarious. And I think one of the things that’s made it last so long through the years is that we love eachother [and] we respect each other, but we have a lot of fun. Anytime [there’s] too much tension going on, either one of us can like, find a joke about it to really break the tension, where we don’t let it go so far,” she told the “Dumb Blonde” podcast. She added that the two avoid having arguments. “We never fought back and forth. And I’m glad now that we never did, because once you start that, that becomes a lifetime thing. I’ve seen it with so many people, and I thought, ‘I ain’t ever starting that.’ I couldn’t bear to think that he’d say something I couldn’t take… because I’m a very sensitive person toward other people and myself.” She mentioned Dean attending her award for receiving Song of the Year in 1967, a year after they were wearing. She stated he hated all the attention so much, he vowed to never attend another award show again. “And he never did,” she said.

Rather than keeping them apart, however, Parton believes their differences have only made them a stronger couple. “They say that opposites attract, and it’s true,” she said. “We’re completely opposite, but that’s what makes it fun. I never know what he’s gonna say or do. He’s always surprising me,” she told People in 2015. In 2016, they renewed their vows. Now that the couple is older, Parton says she plans to stay closer to home. “”I do not think I will ever tour again. I like to stay a little closer to home with my husband,” she told Pollstar. “We’re getting older now, and I don’t want to be gone for four or five weeks at a time. Something could happen. I would not feel right about that — if I were gone and somebody needed me.”