Dolly Parton had a simple final request for her younger sister Stella: keep me in your prayers. Singer/songwriter Stella, 77, sat down with CBS Mornings‘ Gayle King this week to reminisce about her famous older sibling and talk about their final conversations before Dolly’s death at 80 on Aug. 25 following what her spokesperson said was a “brief battle with cancer.”
“That’s the last thing Dolly asked me for, was prayer,” said Stella.
While King tried to suss out how Parton felt about another one of her sisters, younger sibling Freida, raising alarms among the singer’s fans in October of last year when she asked for prayers for the Grammy-winning country superstar before the world found out she was sick, Stella said that was not her business to tell.
“I think Dolly got on to Freida about that … I don’t know, because I haven’t asked Freida because it was very touchy about all that,” Stella said, suggesting that her two sisters had a chat about it and that Dolly told Freida to “pipe it down.” Stella, who said Freida’s comments — which she later apologized for after fearing she’d caused alarm among Dolly’s millions of fans — came from a place of worry. And, as it turns out, those calls for prayer were later part of Dolly’s last request to Stella, the family of 12’s third-oldest sister behind the country legend.
King noted that the official statement about Parton’s death said she died after a “brief battle with cancer,” asking Stella why the family decided not to share any more specifics. “That was her business,” said Stella, noting Parton did not specifically ask them to withhold the details. “But she didn’t tell us that we could say it. So out of respect for her, I can talk about my love for her and describe who she is to me, but it’s not my business to tell her business.”
While Stella said Parton’s media-shy late husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean — who died on March 3 at 82 — was supportive of her career, he preferred that they keep their romance and life together, private. “He would rather her be at the house with her hair up in a ponytail and barefooted, cookin’ in the kitchen and just, you know, messin’ around the house. That’s, I think, that’s what he would have preferred,” Stella told King.
And though they rarely appeared in public together, their love was undeniable and deep, prompting King to wonder if Parton’s rapid demise after Dean’s passing might have been a case of death-by-heartbreak. “I think she was very sad, but I don’t think that’s why she got sick,” said Stella. “I think she worked too hard and didn’t maybe take as good a care of herself as she should have.”
King was reminded that at one point Parton said she spent so much time taking care of Dean she may have neglected to focus on her own health, asking Stella if that rang true. “To a point,” she said. “I know their relationship was very unique and very deep and loyal, and I think it broke her heart to see him in the shape he got to before he passed away. But I don’t think that’s what made her sick. I think my sister worked so hard, for so long and just kept going. Even to the last conversation I had with her she was working. That was her passion.”
Parton was legendarily hard-working, right up until her death. Her longtime manager, Danny Nozell, said in a statement that “Dolly worked up until the day she died” and that she spent the last few years of her life building a road map of projects that will continue to roll out for “decades to come.” Following the June opening of the Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stops in Cornersville, Tenn., Parton’s SongTeller Hotel will open next week, followed later this month by the Life of Many Colors museum housed inside the Nashville hotel.
The long list of future projects ranges from a line of Dolly Dolls and Dolly Cup of Ambition coffee line also slated to drop this month, as well as a musical about her life and career, Dolly: A True Original Musical, which begins Broadway previews on Dec. 7.
While the pain of losing her sister is hard to put into words, Stella said she knows Dolly had accepted her fate near the end. “I know she was at peace,” said Stella, who noted that once Dolly got famous, she never once saw her famously rhinestone-studded sister without her makeup, even during sleepovers at her house. “Because I could always tell by looking at her face, even if I hadn’t seen her in months, on camera I could tell if she was hurt, angry, happy or sad or felt bad. I could see it on her, she’s my sister. We were very close as a family. She knew where she was going. She wasn’t going anywhere bad. She was going to be with mama and daddy. She was definitely prepared.”
Watch the interview with Stella Parton below.
