After her first public appearance at Dollywood Friday, Dolly Parton said she is "doing better than I thought" after husband Carl Dean's death March 3.

Dean was famously private and would seldom appear in public, let alone with his famous wife. But Parton said he would come to her theme park, standing in line to buy a ticket just like other visitors to Dollywood. “He didn’t want somebody giving him a ticket ‘cause he was Dolly’s husband,” she said.

Dolly Parton is opening up about the death of her husband, Carl Dean, earlier this month. In an interview with Knox News published Monday, March 17 — just two weeks after Dean’s death — Parton, 79, revealed that her husband “suffered a great deal” before he passed away. “I'm doing better than I thought I