'If You Hadn't Been There': Dolly Parton releases new ballad in tribute to her late husband

US country legend Dolly Parton has released a heart swelling new ballad in tribute to her late husband, Carl Dean.

Dean, who was Parton’s devoted husband of nearly 60 years, died on Monday aged 82.

“I fell in love with Carl Dean when I was 18 years old,” Parton, 79, wrote on Instagram Friday morning. “We have spent 60 precious and meaningful years together. Like all great love stories, they never end. They live on in memory and song.”

"He will always be the star of my life story, and I dedicate this song to him.” 

The song, ‘If You Hadn't Been There’, is a ballad of gratitude and enters the pantheon of gorgeous, big-hearted Parton ballads. In it, she asks who or where she would be without him, singing that he cradled her close with his “loving arms,” and that he was her “rock, a soft place to land.”

“If you hadn’t been there/Well, who would I be?” she sings. “You always see the best in me / You’re loving arms have cradled me.”

She ends the ballad with a whisper: “I wouldn't be here / If you hadn't been there.”

If your eyes are dry by the end of this one, you're made of stronger stuff than the rest of the Euronews Culture team.

Parton met Dean outside the Wishy Washy Laundromat the day she moved to Nashville at age 18. They married two years later, on Memorial Day in 1966. Dean also inspired one of Parton's best-known songs, ‘Jolene’, after a flirty bank teller seemed to take innocent interest in her husband.

“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” she said. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us - when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’ So it’s really an innocent song all around, but sounds like a dreadful one.”

Thank you for being you, Dolly. Now, will someone please pass more tissues.