Just days before she died, Dolly Parton told People she still had “so many things I want to achieve.” She was 80, and she was still working.
Parton’s cancer diagnosis was never made public, and it’s still unclear when she learned of it. A spokesman confirmed Tuesday that she died in Nashville, surrounded by loved ones, after a brief battle with the disease.
Her health had been fragile for more than a year. She postponed and then canceled a Las Vegas residency in May, saying she’d been dealing with a large number of kidney stones along with immune and digestive problems that kept her close to home in Tennessee for treatment. She’d also said that caring for her husband, Carl Dean, who died in March 2025, sometimes pulled her away from tending to her own health.
Even so, she wasn’t done. In a statement to People a few days before her death, she said she planned to keep going: “I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”
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