Dolly Parton paid tribute to her late husband Carl Dean on Thursday with the release of a soaring new ballad honoring him.
The song, If You Hadn't Been There, was released just three days after the 79-year-old country music icon revealed that her reclusive husband had died at 82.
'Carl and I fell in love when I was 18 and he was 23, and like all great love stories, they never end,' she sweetly captioned the post. 'They live in memory and in song, and I dedicate this to him.'
The new single opened with delicate piano, acoustic guitar and pedal steel guitar before Dolly's opening line, which restated the title.
'If you hadn't been there / Where would I be?' she sings.
She goes on to praise Dean's 'trust, love and belief,' even though they've gone through their share of 'ups and downs.'
In the second verse, Dolly sings a variation on the title: 'If you hadn't been you / Well, who would I be?'
After leaving her voice exposed with just piano and guitars, the drums jump in to accompany her on the second verse, beefing up the instrumentation.
Dolly Parton reveals how she is grieving following death of husband Carl Dean
She goes on to praise her love for 'always see[ing] the best in me.'
A chorus falls in behind Dolly as she sings the start of the chorus: 'I wouldn't be here if you hadn't been there.'
The line echoed a tribute that Parton wrote to her late uncle and mentor, the country songwriter Bill Owens, after his death in April 2021.
'I'll start this eulogy by saying I wouldn't be here if he hadn't been there. He was there... there in my young years to encourage me to keep playing my guitar, to keep writing my songs, to keep practicing my singing,' she wrote in an Instagram tribute shortly
In the bridge, Dolly calls Carl her 'rock' and her 'wings,' before repeating the opening line of the chorus.
After repeating the chorus in an even grander, lengthened version, Dolly concludes the song with her voice reduced to a tear-inducing whisper as the instruments die down around her.
Although the Jolene hitmaker didn't release the song until after her husband's death, she previously teased the release of a song of the same name back in January.
Fan shares tear-jerking story about Dolly Parton's reclusive husband following his death
The seemingly completed recording suggests she had likely recorded it some time ago, though Carl could still have been the intended subject, as Dolly has written numerous love songs about her husband throughout their marriage of nearly 60 years.
Earlier on Thursday, Parton took to social media to thank loved ones and fans for their support as she adjusts to life without her husband.
'This is a love note to family, friends and fans. Thank you for all the messages, cards and flowers that you've sent to pay your respects for the loss of my beloved husband Carl,' she wrote. 'I can't reach out personally to each of you but just know it has meant the world to me.
'He is in God's arms now and I am okay with that,' she added.
In 2015, Dolly told People that part of the secret to their enduring love was that she and Carl were pleasantly different from each other.
'They say that opposites attract, and it's true,' she explained. '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 later shed more light on why her husband avoided the spotlight, which he 'never wanted to be in,' in a 2023 episode of What Would Dolly Do? Radio on Apple Music.
'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,' she recalled.
Inside Dolly Parton's private marriage to husband Carl Dean after his death at 82
The singer previously said that Dean spent most of his time at their estate in the suburb of Brentwood, near Nashville.
However, he could presumably come and go as he pleased, as he didn't have a famous visage, unlike his superstar wife.
Despite Dolly's enormous success — and the life of luxury that it provided for them — the two never had any children.
While speaking to Saga Magazine in 2023, the performer shed some light on why she and Carl kept their family as a duo.
'When you're a young couple, you think you're going to have kids, but it just wasn't one of those burning things for me,' she explained. 'I had my career and my music and I was traveling. If I'd had kids, I'd have stayed at home with them. I'm sure and worried myself to death about them.'
Later, she felt vindicated by her decision, as she would 'hate to be bringing a child into this world right now' due to 'everything that's going on.'
However, in 2014 she told Billboard that she and Carl weren't opposed to having children, and admitted they even had names picked out if they ended up having any.
The same year, she told People: 'I often think, it just wasn't meant for me to have kids so everybody's kids can be mine.'
Back in 1977, she also told the publication that for her cover story that she wouldn't want to have children if it meant 'leav[ing] them for somebody else to raise while I have a career.'
The 9 To 5 singer first met her future husband in a place most wouldn't peg as a hotbed of romance — the laundromat.
But both Dolly and Carl described the fateful meeting in 1964 as love at first sight in later interviews.
'I'd come to Nashville with dirty clothes,' she told the New York Times. '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.'
Dolly said she had a feeling that the mystery man approaching her would become a major figure in her life.
'He came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband,' she declared.
The two began dating shortly afterward, and Carl proposed to Dolly around two years later, in 1966.
Although she was over the moon, the songstress later recalled that her manager at the time thought being engaged, and then married, could harm her career at that early stage.
She decided against a large wedding because of his warning, but she and Carl were still determined to get married, so they opted to tie the knot with just the pastor of Ringgold Baptist Church in Ringgold, Georgia, officiating.
The only witnesses to the low-key ceremony on May 30, 1966, were the pastor's wife and Dolly's mother, Avie Lee Owens, she told Local 3 News in Tennessee in 2012.
'I had bought a little dress, momma had bought me a Bible, some flowers on it. We grabbed momma and went back, and got married on a Monday, in a church,' she recounted.
The nuptials were so small scale that Dolly and Carl didn't even have time to celebrate, as she said they both had to go back to work the following day.
