Notable People
Porter Wagoner gave Dolly Parton many expensive gifts while they worked together. Here’s what she gave him in return.
When Dolly Parton was on The Porter Wagoner Show, many people believed she was romantically involved with Wagoner. To fuel the rumors, Wagoner often bought Parton expensive presents that he gifted her on air. Here’s the type of gift Wagoner liked to give the singer.
Porter Wagoner gave Dolly Parton expensive gifts
Parton always maintained that her relationship with Wagoner was purely platonic. She denied that he was her lover or her sugar daddy, though she said it didn’t surprise her when people assumed the latter. He did give her a great deal of massively expensive presents.
“[H]e was not my sugar daddy, even though he was always buyin’ me gifts,” Parton said in the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “He just happened to get his gifts to me publicized. He often got gifts from me, but it was a personal thing with me, not a publicity thing. Like I say, it was a relationship of a kind.”
Interviewer Jerry Bailey wrote that by 1972, Wagoner had gifted Parton “five rings, two Cadillacs, and two necklaces during the years she had been with his show.”
Viewers of ‘The Porter Wagoner Show’ couldn’t wait to see what he got Dolly Parton
Wagoner often gifted Parton these presents on his show, and viewers looked forward to seeing what he would lavish her with each Christmas.
“People couldn’t wait for the season to roll around just to see what Porter would give Dolly,” a journalist told Nash.
During one interview, Wagoner walked into Parton’s dressing room while she talked to a journalist. She took the opportunity to ask about her presents.
“What are you gonna give me for Christmas?” Parton asked Wagoner.
“Another chance,” he responded.
“Another chance!” she said. “That’s what you gave me last year.”
“Last year I gave you a Cadillac, a diamond necklace, and another chance,” he said.
She said she wasn’t sure if he expected anything in return
In return, Parton also gave Wagoner valuable presents. One year, for example, she gave him 49 percent ownership of her company, Owepar Publishing. Some wondered if Wagoner was looking for something more intimate in return, however. If he was, Parton said, he never got it from her.
“I do think that some of the girls that he had, I think he was involved, but that’s why — they were involved before they became part of the show, and that’s how they became part of it,” she said. “But I don’t know what he expected out of them. I don’t know exactly what he expected out of me. I only know what he got.”
