Country music icon Dolly Parton made headlines in November and December 2020 when a vaccine she helped fund, developed by pharmaceutical company Moderna, became one of the first to prove promising in the fight against the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.
The headlines kicked up discussion that appears periodically online about Parton's personal life, namely the singer-songwriter's marriage to a husband who prefers to stay out of the spotlight. Parton said in a November 2020 interview with Entertainment Tonight that a lot of people have asked her over the years whether her husband, Carl Dean, is even real.
