‘I’m Proud of My Legacy’ Dolly!

THE COUNTRY LEGEND REFLECTS ON HER LIFE ONSTAGE, HER LOVE STORY WITH LATE HUSBAND CARL DEAN & HER PRACTICAL APPROACH TO AGING

- JEFF NELSON,JIM WRIGHT

Dolly Parton’s People cover interview has just ended when she asks for a tissue: “Can I wipe my nose? I got to cryin’ over Carl.” The country legend’s husband of nearly 59 years, Carl Dean, died at 82 in March, and she grew emotional discussing their love story—but held back her tears for five minutes, until the cameras stopped rolling inside a Nashville-area photo studio on a sunny August afternoon.

A professional to her manicured fingertips, Parton knows the show must go on. And that spirit of perseverance has carried her through seven decades in the spotlight. “I’ve had to wear my heart on my sleeve for a long time now, and I cry easier than I used to. But it’s just leaving your life wide open for everybody to look right at you, right through you and right into you,” Parton, 79, says of sharing her joys and sorrows with the public. “I hope they see my heart.”

She has wielded that same heart, soul and grit since she was a little girl singing into a makeshift tin-can microphone on the front porch of her family’s two-room log cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Now, in her new book Star of the Show: My Life on Stage, Parton looks back on her enduring career as a performer—in music, movies and beyond.

Movie Star With 9 to 5 costars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda at the film's 1980 premiere.