Barbara didn’t stop there, asking, “But do you ever feel like you’re a joke? That people make fun of you?”

Dolly said, “All these years people have thought the joke is on me but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing and I can change it at any time.”

“I am sure of myself as a person, I am sure of my talent,” she added. “And I am sure of my love for life and that sort of thing, I am very content. I like the person that I am. So I can afford to ‘piddle around’ and ‘do-diddle around’ with makeup and clothes, because I am secure with myself.”

Then, when Barbara questioned why Dolly was married when she was away so much, bringing up the “temptations” that came with life on the road, Dolly basically said she and her husband, Carl Dean (who died in 2025), valued freedom and kept anything that happened with other people to themselves, adding, “I’ve got better things to do than sit around in my room thinking, ‘Oh what’s Carl doing tonight, I wonder if he’s with somebody.'”