Comment by mattsolle
2 months ago
If anyone hasn't listened to "Dolly Parton's America" (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america), I highly recommend it.
Does a great job interviewing Dolly and discussing with her (and those two are around her) who she is, her life events, her thoughts on life. I knew people loved Dolly Parton before I listened but didn't really know why and the podcast helped me understand a bit more of it. It features a LOT of one-on-one time with Dolly in a way that I don't often find docu-series do. It's fantastic!
My favorite Dolly story that she sometimes tells in talk shows was when she heard about a Dolly Parton Look Alike contest and entered it. She came in second place.
One minor fact about Dolly I've always found fascinating is that she was married to the same dude for almost 60 years, until he passed away recently. I mean, being as famous as she was as an entertainer - that just seems like an extreme anomaly.
Do we have actual data on whether or not celebrities have more volatile relationships?
My gut feeling says they may very well be. But I feel it could also just be the media being bloodthirsty towards celebrity drama skewing our perception of it.
> Do we have actual data on whether or not celebrities have more volatile relationships?
Yes, they are legitimately more volatile [1]
> I find that the overall divorce rate for celebrities during their first 16 years of marriage is 52%, compared to 31% for the UK population as a whole.
>Celebrity first marriages fare worse than subsequent marriages with 57% versus 47% ending in divorce within 16 years, compared to 35% and 28% respectively for UK
[1] https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/research/celebrity-divorce...
I guess the fact that I'm not mildy surprised that people can be married for 60 years says something about how different our cultures are? Even though we're on HN discussing so many other things we have in common.
I think money, fame, celebrity status, etc. often creates pressures on the relationship.
Kind of like how it sometimes pushes people into drug addictions. That's a stereotype that we've all heard about since kids, but it wasn't until relatively recently that I thought about it seriously that it occurred to me that a touring celebrity musician's life can be stressful and the drugs can be (or start out as) a pressure valve release. I think that part of it clicked to me when I heard a musician being interviewed about it, I forget which. Maybe it was a Beatle talking about their early amphetamine days.
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It's not unheard of. But I guess it's a mix of several small factors:
1. divorce rates have been rising for decades.
2. 60 years is a very long time, and that means Dolly would have had to marry around 18-20. Marrying that young these days for my generation very much is an anomaly, and people are putting off marriage more and more these days.
3. Celebrity culture in particular has a much more tumultuous relationship. In a number of cases, marriage may simply be another influential tool to manage fame and wealth rather than an act of love and caring.
Divorce is rampant among celebrities in the USA. Maybe not worldwide?
Paul Newman I think. Same thing. He was also married to the same person for decades.
Yeah and just like Dolly, someone we need more of.
George Benson is probably a better example. Like another commenter points out, though, it might just be bias due to the media reporting more on drama than celebrity wedding anniversaries. But, I must admit, I do often look up biographies of entertainers I like and it is quite unusual for them to have a "normal" romantic life.
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwig married in 1988, and they are both celebrities.
Her husband was Carl Dean.
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Except for the part where they try to inject their woke agenda into it by trying to suggest Jolene is a lesbian song. Nothing wrong with LGBTQIA+ but that part was super cringe as it was clear they were inserting their own adgenda rather than just interviewing Dolly Parton