“Carl and I spent many wonderful years together,” Parton wrote in an Instagram post. “Words can’t do justice to the love we shared for over 60 years. Thank you for your prayers and sympathy.”

A statement added, “He will be laid to rest in a private ceremony with immediate family attending. He was survived by his siblings Sandra and Donnie. … The family has asked for privacy during this difficult time.”

Dean has been a subject of fan fascination since the beginning of Parton’s career, never attending events with the superstar and rarely even seen in photographs, with Parton always insisting that their mutual agreement on his staying out of the limelight helped the relationship stay together.

Parton and Dean were married on May 30, 1966 in Ringhold, Georgia, with Parton’s mother in attendance, two years after they began dating, which began when she was 18. Dean was rarely sighted with her even in the early years of their marriage, before she became a country-pop and music/screen crossover sensation.

When they met at a laundromat almost immediately after her arrival in Nashville, Parton said, “I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me). He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about.”

“A lot of people say there’s no Carl Dean, that he’s just somebody I made up to keep other people off me,” she acknowledged in an interview with the Associated Press in 1984, adding that she wished she could talk him into doing a photo shoot.

In 2015, she explained to Parade, “I married a really good man, a guy that’s completely different from me… He loves to hear about the things I do. I love to hear about the things he does. So we enjoy each other’s company. We get along good.”

In 2016, in honor of their 50th anniversary, Parton’s website devoted a page to the couple, saying they had “enjoyed 50 years of wedded bliss despite facing many of life’s obstacles common to most married couples and plenty of unique challenges all their own.” The page added that Dolly and Carl have lived happily-ever-after for 50 years. They’ve loved and supported each other while respecting each other’s independence… While one would think Dolly would be the most entertaining of the two, she often says that it’s Carl’s unique sense of humor which keeps her laughing. Given Dolly’s larger-than-life outlook on everything, it makes perfect sense that her one-and-only would be equally as special in every way.”

Her website said that she wrote the song “From Here to the Moon and Back” with Dean in mind, and singled out these lyrics: “”From here to the moon and back / Who else in this world will love you like that? / Love everlasting, I promise you that / From here to the moon and back.”