‘I will always love you’... but Dolly is not dating her best pal
MARRIED Dolly Parton has denied that she is gay after being dogged by years of rumours that she is secretly dating her best friend Judy Ogle. In an interview with The Sun, the 73-year-old, who has been married to Carl Dean, 76, for five decades, said ‘all good publicity is good publicity’ – but that it’s not true. She said: ‘So people say that, because you can’t really have a great relationship with a woman. I’m not gay but I have so many gay friends and I accept everybody for who they are.
Dolly has been friends with Judy since they were kids, for 64 years in fact. The singer regularly refers to her as her ‘girlfriend’ and says the pair, pictured, are like ‘sisters’.
But she compares their closeness to Oprah Winfrey, 65, and her best friend Gayle King, as they have also been falsely linked. She said: ‘Well, people love to talk, people love to gossip. They’ve said that about Oprah but it’s not true.’
Dolly and her husband have always kept a low profile, and she says she loves that she’s a gay icon, but there’s nothing more to it than that.
She added: ‘My best friend Judy and I have been best friends for 64 years, since we were little kids. We knew each other, our parents knew each other, we grew up together, we were like sisters, became best friends.
‘[Judy] was very quiet, I was very outgoing. So we made perfect friends. We went all through school together, all through high school. She went to the army when we graduated because she needed the insurance and she needed to help her family and I was trying to make it.
‘As soon as she got out, she came to Nashville and we’ve been together ever since.’
The singer previously spoke to USA Today about her husband, saying that he isn’t a huge fan of her songs and has only seen her perform live a few times.
She said: ‘He’s not necessarily one of the biggest fans of my music. He’s proud of me and he loves that I love what I do but... It’s a touchy subject. I’m like his little girl and he worries about that.’