Dolly Parton shares the secret to her 56-year marriage with husband Carl Dean

After more than five decades with her husband, Carl Dean, it’s safe to say Dolly Parton knows a thing or two about marriage — and she’s sharing some of the secrets to her happy relationship.

“We both have a warped sense of humor,” she recently told “ET Canada.” “And I think humor, honestly, is one of the best things when you’re married like that. Even if you have a problem, if you have a great sense of humor, if you say something you can’t take back (you) usually have some crazy way of getting out of it.”

The country legend also opened up about how staying busy in her career, as well as having mutual interests outside of work, has helped keep the energy fresh.

“I like it when people say, ‘How did it last so long?’ I say, ‘I stay going,’” Parton said. “You know, there’s a lot to be said about that. So we’re not in each other’s face all the time. He’s not in the business, so we have different interests, but yet we have the things we love to do together. So it was meant to be, I think. He was the one I was supposed to have and vice versa.”

She added that their relationship has been fairly harmonious over the years.

“We’ve never had, you know, serious arguments to say bad things to each other we have to take back,” she said.

Parton, 76, and Dean, 80, have been married since 1966. They met at a Wishy Washy laundromat on the very same day Parton moved to Nashville to pursue her musical dreams, and went to McDonald’s on their first date.

Dean has mostly kept a low profile over the years — to the point where some fans have speculated that he doesn’t even exist.

But as Parton has explained, her husband just likes staying out of the limelight.

“It’s just not who he is,” she told “Entertainment Tonight” in 2020. “He’s, like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he’d never get a minute’s peace and he’s right about that.”

Dean may enjoy keeping his life separate from the entertainment industry, but he has a passion for music, which Parton is honoring with her upcoming rock album.

“We have a lot of favorite songs,” she told E! News last month. “He loves the rock ‘n’ roll, he loves Led Zeppelin and he loves ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ So I’m going to do a lot of the things like that for him.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com