Dolly Parton's Legendary Life in Pictures (2024)

Dolly Rebecca Parton was born January 19, 1946, the fourth of 12 children. Her parents were so "dirt poor," she's said, that they paid the doctor who delivered her with a bag of oatmeal. "In the winter time, we just had a pan of water and we'd wash down as far as possible, and we'd wash up as far as possible," she told Playboy of her childhood days in rural Locust Ridge, Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains. "Then, when somebody cleared the room, we'd wash 'possible.' That's the way it was." She and her siblings slept three or four to a bed.

She started singing in church, and learned to play the guitar at age 8. After performing on local radio and TV shows, she recorded her first single at 13 and performed at the Grand Ole Opry.

Parton, who posed for Playboy's cover in 1978, says she doesn't see herself as sexy. "Me? Not a bit. A lot of people get all turned off by the wig, the heels, the fingernails, the whole artificial bit. I do dress kinda pretty but old-fashioned. I think maybe I dress this way partly because of the image, you know, and partly because when I was a little girl growing up in a big old poor family, this was the way that the rich folks' wives dressed, when we'd see them drivin' through in their big old cars," she told Roger Ebert.

"As for the 'real me.' Well, under this wig, my own hair is about the same length and color, and I wear it about the same. But sometimes I'll dress up in a baggy old shirt and go out with my husband in a camper or something, just havin' ourselves a good time, and nobody recognizes me."

In 2005, Parton was back on top of the country charts for her duet with Brad Paisley, "When I Get Where I'm Goin'." Then the song "Travelin' Thru," which Parton wrote for the film Transamerica, earned her a second Oscar nomination in 2006. Because of the song's acceptance of a transgender woman, she received death threats.

She also had a guest mentor stint on American Idol in 2008. And then she wrote the score for the musical 9 to 5, an adaptation of her film, which opened on Broadway in 2009. "I've been fortunate to live long enough to see that I have made it, that people do have some respect for the things I've achieved," she told AARP. "There wasn't ever a time I thought I wasn't going to make it. I never had any doubt that I was going to spend my life in music."

In addition to her 70th birthday, Parton and husband Carl Dean will celebrate 50 years of marriage in May 2016. (It's been reported that Dean will appear publicly at their anniversary celebration.) "We're completely opposite, but that's what makes it fun," Parton told People of how they've made it so long. "I never know what he's gonna say or do. He's always surprising me. My husband is a good man, first of all," she continues. "He's a deep person, but he has a great and warped sense of humor. He makes me laugh and entertains me. He's very secure within himself."

The couple love to take RV trips together but Parton says that Dean prefers to be at home. "He wants to be mostly around the house. He knows I'm just the opposite. I can't go enough places. I can't do enough things. He loves that. He's independent. He doesn't need me in his face, and it's the same with me. But when we're together, we have enough things in common that it works. We love the simple life. We can be calm and just have a good time."