Dolly Parton’s Sister Reveals Late Country Icon Last Request, Reason Why She Thinks Singer Got Sick: ‘She

Stella Parton sat down with Gayle King to talk about Dolly's final days and her legacy.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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