After 57 years of marriage, Dolly Parton reveals how she and her husband, Carl Dean, maintain the spark.

Dolly Parton has shared the secret to her marriage of 57 years with her husband, Carl Dean.

The singer, 78, spoke candidly about the dynamic of her relationship during an interview with E! News, published on 30 May. Parton acknowledged that when it comes to the secret behind making her marriage work, she and her husband take their space from each other when needed.

“I’m just saying, anything new gets old,” she said. “And I think if you just kind of stay together so much, you just nitpick every little thing and notice all that.”

The “9 to 5” singer went on to detail how special her time is with her husband after they’ve been apart.

“It’s worked for us because we both do different things and it’s exciting when we are together,” Parton, who’s been married to Dean since 1966, continued. “So the fact that there’s some little space that makes it exciting when you go home.”

She also shared that when she and her husband have their one-on-one time, such as a date night, they find ways to “enjoy each other’s” company. After pointing out that she likes to cook during her evenings with Dean, she then detailed another activity they like to do during the day.

“We have our little RV and we like to travel around,” she said. “Going down and get some food or I’ll make a picnic and we go down to the river and have a picnic and just kind of ride around and do our little things.”

This isn’t the first time that Parton has opened up about her keys to a long-lasting marriage. During an interview with ET Canada in 2020, the “Jolene” singer described how she and her husband’s similar senses of humor have kept their relationship so strong.

“We both have a warped sense of humor,” she said. “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.”

She then confessed that she and Dean have never had “serious arguments” where they “say bad things to each other we have to take back”.

Parton once again expressed how her and Dean’s time apart due to their different careers has benefited their relationship.

“So we’re not in each other’s face all the time,” she said. “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.”