Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton. Rick Diamond/Getty Images for ACM
While Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton have been close friends for more than 40 years, there are still a few things that the “9 to 5” singer keeps private.
“Is Dolly as good a cook as she says she is?” Andy Cohen asked McEntire, 69, during a recent episode of his SiriusXM radio show Andy Cohen Live.
In response, McEntire revealed that she’s “never had [Dolly’s] food” or been to her house.
“She’s never invited me over,” the Happy’s Place star revealed, adding that she also hasn’t met Parton’s husband, Carl Thomas Dean.
“I saw something the other day that they were out camping, and she and Carl went back to where they got married,” McEntire added, agreeing with Cohen that it is “absolutely” incredible that Parton, 78, has managed to keep her relationship under-the-radar. “Well, I feel better that you [Andy] haven’t met him now.”
Cohen, 56, however, did not know how he would have ever met Parton and Dean.
“Well, what do I know? Who have I met?” he quipped. “You’re the queen of country, Reba, in my mind.”
Parton and Dean, 82, have been married since 1966, two years after meeting outside a local Nashville laundromat.
“We’re the perfect partners,” Parton exclusively told Us Weekly in January 2022. “We both have a great sense of humor. … We’re able to solve any problems and any situation, making a joke about it and not letting it get too heavy, but we respect each other and we like each other. We lucked up, let’s put it that way.”
Parton further told Us how she and Dean keep their spark alive.
“Last year on his birthday, I dressed up in my Playboy bunny suit, made him breakfast and [ran] around in that for a little while,” Parton said at the time. “You know, most people can keep a marriage [going strong] if you make a little effort. Some people just get slouching and lazy and about stuff that ain’t important, like leaving the toilet seat up. And if that’s the worst thing you’ve to worry about, you’re already in trouble.”
While their 50-year marriage has remained a pillar of strength, Dean has seldom been interested in joining Parton in the public eye.
“Carl has never been in the limelight and all; never wanted to be in it. He don’t like it,” Parton said in a 2023 episode of What Would Dolly Do? Radio on Apple Music 1. “He went to one thing with me early on, when we first married, to a BMI Song of the Year [event], and he came out of there taking off his tuxedo, his tie and all that and said, ‘Don’t ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things because I ain’t going.’ I never asked him and he never did.”
