Dolly Parton is still reeling from her husband’s death. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the country legend revealed that she consistently gets choked up during the parts of her Broadway musical about her late husband, Carl Dean, who died in March.

“I get very emotional. Like, the part about Carl, of course,” Parton told the outlet about her show, Dolly: A True Original Musical. “… John Behlmann, who plays Carl, does such a wonderful job. When they start singing a song called ‘From Here To The Moon and Back,’ I cry every time.”

While watching her love story play out on stage makes her teary, Parton noted that, “in a way, it’s kind of healing to relive my life like that, to sit back and watch it, instead of having to live it.”

Dolly, which premiered in Nashville earlier this year, recounts Parton’s life, from growing up in a small Tennessee town, to moving to the big city, where she met Dean outside a laundromat.

“I left two boyfriends back home, thinking that’s the last thing is I’m gonna meet a boy… well, I got one that lasted 40 years,” she said. “I’m a very spiritual person, and I just felt that was meant to be. I think if we pray the right way, think the right way, I think God places things in your life. Or that’s how I always looked at it with Carl.”

Inside Dolly Parton’s Relationship With Carl Dean

After their initial meeting, Parton and Dean had an enduring love that lasted decades. While the couple opted to keep their private life, largely at Dean’s request.

“[He] never did an interview in his life,” Parton said during on an appearance on the Khloe in Wonderland podcast. The singer went on to recount how she “begged” her husband to go to a 1966 awards ceremony after she won BMI’s Song of the Year for “Put It Off Until Tomorrow.”

“When we were leaving that… he said, ‘Now. I want you to do great, but don’t you ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things ’cause I ain’t going,’” she said. “And he never did. And I knew right then that I’m just going to keep him private as best I can. Never ask him to do nothing. And certainly he’s not going to volunteer, right?”

That, Parton believes, wound up being the secret to their successful relationship.

“We were so good for each other because he’s a total loner,” she said “But we could just be in the house all day and say two or three words, didn’t matter. Or we could talk all afternoon and lay in bed, talk at night in the dark.”