Dolly Parton’s Cousin Says Singer Kept Cancer Battle Private

Dolly Parton kept her cancer battle to herself so everybody could focus on happier things, her cousin says. “She always kept things private because she always wanted to keep everybody being positive around her and put that out there in the world,” her first cousin Richie Owens told Today. “Just, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m going to be fine.’ Just show the love.”

Owens, who co-wrote songs with Parton in the mid-Sixties and produced her Hungry Again (1998) and Precious Memories (1999) albums, said Parton even kept her diagnosis from family members. “She of course posted herself that she had been going through health problems, but no one really knew what a lot of that was, including myself,” he said.

He also discussed Parton’s funeral, the details of which had previously been kept vague, according to her wishes. “She wanted to keep it very quiet,” Owens said. “The word keeps getting brought up, ‘funeral,’ and I don’t believe that was really the case in this situation. It was a burial, to be buried beside her husband.” Parton was buried next to her husband, Carl Dean, who died last year, a few days after her death on Aug. 28. The occasion was small, with only a few family members in attendance. “It was very quiet, very quickly done, and not for any bad reasons whatsoever, it’s just that’s what she wanted,” Owens said. “She wanted to keep it very, very private.”

Part of the reason Parton wanted it kept quiet, he said, was so that people wouldn’t mourn her in the wrong way. When she died, he said, her wishes were that “she would much rather see people take that $50 you should spend on flowers and give it to her Imagination Library. … She really cared about her charities.”

A day before her funeral, Parton’s sister, Stella, honored her sister with a Facebook post. She wrote that what the public saw of the country star was “exactly who she was.” “My sister was always thinking of others and if you want to honor her legacy, show more kindness, lift others up, and give more of your time and resources, as she continued to do to the very end,” she wrote.