Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean's Relationship Timeline

Despite their over 50-year romance, Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean are not the type to flaunt their love.

They are hardly ever seen in public together, and photos of the couple tend to come from Parton's personal collection. "I married a really good man, a guy that's completely different from me," the "I Will Always Love You" singer told Parade of her spouse in 2015. "He's not in show business."

Dean is still supportive of Parton's life in the public eye, however. "He's not resentful of any of that," she said. "He loves to hear about the things I do. I love to hear about the things he does. So we enjoy each other's company. We get along good."

The pair first met at a laundromat in Nashville when Parton was just 18 years old. "I was surprised and delighted that while he talked to me, he looked at my face (a rare thing for me)," she wrote on her website. "He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding out who I was and what I was about."

Two years later, the twosome snuck off one weekend to tie the knot, with only Parton's mother, the pastor and his wife in attendance. "We thought Ringgold because we knew that was where you could get your license and get married the same day," she recalled to a local news station in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Though the couple contemplated having children early on, parenthood was not in the cards.

"When my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids," Parton told Billboard in 2014. "We weren't doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn't turn out that way."

In 2014, she told PEOPLE, "I often think, it just wasn't meant for me to have kids so everybody's kids can be mine."

Instead, the couple enjoys each other's company. "I'm happy when I'm on stage, I'm happy when things are going great in the business, but I'm also very happy when I'm home with [Dean] and we do our little things together," she previously told Parade. "We sight-see all of Tennessee and Kentucky, the areas that we can get back home from at night. Sometimes we'll stay over at a Days Inn [motel] where we can just pull up and sneak me in. We don't care, as long as the bed's clean and there's a bathroom. That's how we live."

After 50 years together, the pair renewed their vows at their home in Nashville in 2016. "We just had a simple little ceremony at our chapel at our place," she told Rolling Stone.

From meeting in Nashville to their golden anniversary, here's everything to know about Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean's relationship.

1964: Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean meet in Nashville

The couple first met in 1964 at the Wishy Washy Laundromat on Parton's first day in Nashville. "I'd come to Nashville with dirty clothes," Parton told the New York Times. "I was in such a hurry to get here — and after I'd put my clothes in the machine, I started walkin' down the street, just lookin' at my new home, and this guy hollered at me, and I waved. Bein' from the country, I spoke to everybody. And he came over and, well, it was Carl, my husband."

"My first thought was I'm gonna marry that girl," Dean later said of their initial meeting. "My second thought was, 'Lord she's good lookin.' And that was the day my life began."

1964: Dolly Parton and Carl Thomas Dean begin dating

The pair's relationship progressed quickly from there. Parton was living with her aunt and uncle, watching their son while they were at work. "He came up every day that week and we set out on the porch," she said in a 1976 interview with the New York Times. "I wouldn't even take him in the house."

Instead, Dean took her to his house on a day when she didn't have to babysit. "That was my first chance to go anywhere with Carl, and he drove me straight to his folks' house and introduced me to his mother and daddy," she shared. "'Cause he said he knew right the minute he saw me that that's the one he wanted."