Dolly Parton’s husband of almost 60 years, Carl Dean, died Monday in Nashville at the age of 82.
As PEOPLE pointed out Monday night, Dolly Parton‘s most famous song, “Jolene,” was based on a woman who had a crush on Parton’s late husband.
Per the report, the 1973 hit song “chronicles one woman’s jealousy surrounding her significant other’s interest in another woman.”
According to past interviews by Parton, the woman didn’t try to take Dean, but flirted with him at the bank.
“(The) song was loosely based on a little bit of truth,” she said during the 2014 Glastonbury Festival, per The Independent. “I wrote that years ago when my husband… was spending a little more time with Jolene than I thought he should be.”
The woman’s name was not Jolene. Parton confirmed she decided to use the name of a young fan.
“One night, I was on stage, and there was this beautiful little girl — she was probably 8 years old at the time,” Parton told NPR.
“And she had this beautiful red hair, this beautiful skin, these beautiful green eyes, and she was looking up at me, holding, you know, for an autograph. I said, ‘Well, you’re the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?’ And she said, ‘Jolene.’ And I said, ‘Jolene. Jolene. Jolene. Jolene.’ I said, ‘That is pretty. That sounds like a song. I’m going to write a song about that.’ ”
Parton told the story of the song back in 2008.
“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” Parton told NPR. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”
“She had everything I didn’t, like legs — you know, she was about 6 feet tall. And had all that stuff that some little short, sawed-off honky like me don’t have,” Parton told NPR, per PEOPLE. “So no matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.”
Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.
