Extraordinary Lives
How a chance meeting at Dollywood led to the deepest friendships of their lives
By Gregory S. Schneider The Washington Post
Published August 31, 2026
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SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. — The reunion began at dusk here, outside the small courthouse square that had become an impromptu shrine to hometown legend Dolly Parton.
Robbie Thompson had flown in from Orlando. Garner Byram Jr. had raced south from Waynesboro, Virginia. Libby Rollf had rushed in from Kansas City, Kansas. Others made their way from Dayton, Ohio; Asheville, North Carolina; and elsewhere in Tennessee and Florida.
"We gravitated here because we need each other now," said Aaron Hamby, 30, of South Carolina, about what drew them once again to East Tennessee, where most of them had met years earlier.
Those who had arrived this Wednesday evening carried bouquets of roses, wore T-shirts from past Dolly concerts and hugged the way old friends do. They were young and not-so-young, straight and gay and transgender, married and unmarried. They work in health care and education, in government and in the airline industry. They have varying political views and economic means.
But for all their differences, the small group had forged a bond over time that runs far deeper than the music. Their shared love of Parton had given them something precious: a community some had never expected to find.
"We've become like a family. A Dolly family," said Thompson, 44. "We like this family more than some of us like our own families."
On a week when much of the nation remembered Parton as someone who embraced people of all stripes and transcended so much that divides the country, here was a living manifestation of her power to unite. A group of far-flung souls who had first met in line on a long-ago day at Dollywood and forged a bond deepened by time.
Many of them have traveled the nation and the world together to see Parton, from London to Red Rocks in Colorado. Their reunions have unfolded in South Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and all over the East Coast. They have come to nearly every opening day at the Dollywood theme park, spent too much money on travel, burned too much vacation time — and had a blast doing it.
"We paid for her last tour bus, honey," Byram, 42, joked.
Their faithfulness to Dolly has sometimes strained relationships in their daily lives. "My ex told me we broke up because Dolly came between us," he said, with little remorse. Fifteen years on, even as their numbers have grown and changed, this small group has remained loyal to their patron saint — and to one another.
Now, they had gathered again to celebrate her luminous life, to grieve her passing and to give thanks for bringing them together.
"This is where I feel most at home," Thompson said. "Here with my people."
'They just show up for you'
There was Dolly's celestial voice, of course. And her soul-filled mountain music. But for many of the friends, there was something else that drew them to her decades ago.
"Acceptance," Thompson said Thursday on the porch of a cabin the group had rented together near Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Growing up gay and feeling out of place in small-town Virginia, he was struck by Parton's insistence that it was okay to be who you are, no matter what.
"That message resonated with me from a very early age," he said. It was much the same for Byram, who first saw Dolly with his parents in the early 1990s.
"She was her own unique person, so you could be, too," he said. "You could tell that she didn't judge anybody."
That message made its way to Rollf, 50, who as a girl in Kansas remembers listening to.
"I was a very overweight child," she said. "And she was just so accepting. She was just a ray of sunshine."
As childhood gave way to adulthood, they and others in the group made numerous pilgrimages to Dollywood, even
when few others in their lives understood why they were so drawn to her presence.
"I did it for so many years alone," Brittany Mixon, 51, of Pensacola, Florida, who also was there as a 10-year-old the day the park opened in 1986.
About 15 years ago, the group began to discover one another after several of them met by chance outside an event where Dolly was greeting fans at the park.
They began traveling together to shows around the country and returning to Pigeon Forge almost anytime Parton was scheduled to appear at Dollywood. They embraced Rollf's mother, who often traveled with the group, dubbing her the "Dolly Mama."
Over time, they found, their friendships only deepened.
When Byram's mother died, Thompson and Rollf traveled unannounced to be with him in Virginia.
"They just show up for you," he said. "It would be just absolutely miserable without them. … My life is totally different because of them."
When Rollf's mother died unexpectedly years later, numerous members of the group showed up at her door in Kansas the next day.
"I was never alone," she said.
They call one another on birthdays and even email Shoney's gift cards. They send each other Christmas presents. They commiserate over breakups and job changes. They maintain an endless text chain, and always check on one another by noon each day.
"If you are having a bad day, you can call any one of them," said Carrie Reinig, 52, who lives in Ohio. "We celebrate each other's successes and support each other when things are crappy. … They are legit family."
Could those deep ties weaken now that Parton, their north star, has died? Could the thread that held them together all these years fray?
"I don't feel that part will change," Reinig said. "If anything, we will probably need each other more."
The gift she gave
Thursday evening in the mountainside cabin, more than a dozen Dolly-loving friends gathered to laugh and shed tears, share old photos and reminisce about their many encounters with the singer.
Some cars in the driveway had Dolly-themed license tags and bumper stickers with phrases such as "Dolly vibes only." At least two attendees had Dolly's signature tattooed on their arms.
Inside, a Dolly-branded peach cobbler baked in the oven. The living room television was playing a Dolly marathon — the movie "Steel Magnolias," a documentary of her career, and a replay of her 50th anniversary performance at the Grand Ole Opry. Virtually everyone in the room had attended that show.
"How are you doing?" one person asked Kimberly Baker-Boyle, 55, who moved to East Tennessee from Maryland with her husband and daughters more than a decade ago, mostly to be closer to the Dollyverse.
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