On October 25, 2017, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers finished “Islands in the Stream” on the stage of Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, let their microphones fall to the floor, and walked back toward the lights holding on to each other. It was the last time the two ever sang together. The night itself had started two years earlier, with a phone call in which Dolly refused to let her old friend slip away quietly.
The Morning He Told America
On September 25, 2015, Rogers sat down with Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly on NBC’s Today. He was there to promote Once Again It’s Christmas, his first holiday album since 1998, and the hosts presented him with a plaque marking 120 million albums sold. Then he told them he was done. One more world tour, he said, and then he would say goodbye for good. He called the feeling happily sad, or sadly happy.
He was 77. He joked that he no longer walked around well and that his mobility was driving him crazy. But the real reason was at home in Georgia: his wife, Wanda, and their 11-year-old twin sons, Justin and Jordan. Rogers repeated a line from his memoir, that there is a fine line between being driven and being selfish, and admitted he had crossed it as a younger man with his older children.
I swore that I would do this until I embarrassed myself.
Later that day he posted a video telling fans he wanted them to hear the news from him directly. The tour he announced would be called The Gambler’s Last Deal.
The Phone Call to Dolly
Only days after the Today appearance, Rogers played a sold-out show at the DP Celebrity Theatre at Dollywood, raising $60,000 for Dolly’s Imagination Library, the program that mails free books to young children. The friendship that started in a Los Angeles studio in 1983 had never really stopped.
When Rogers called Dolly to tell her he was saying goodbye to spend more time with his wife and kids, she did not accept a quiet exit. He shared her answer with Closer magazine in 2017.
You cannot get out of town without us doing something.
By the summer of 2017 his body was making the decision for him. He told Rolling Stone his mobility had gotten strange and that he hated walking onstage only to apologize to an audience. A year earlier he had told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he wanted to go fishing with the boys without packing a suitcase every few days.
On July 18, 2017, at a press conference in Nashville, Rogers announced the show Dolly had pushed for: All In for the Gambler: Kenny Rogers’ Farewell Concert Celebration. Part of the proceeds would go to the T.J. Martell Foundation and to the Kenny Rogers Children’s Center in Sikeston, Missouri. Dolly’s statement that day ended with a promise.
As he fades from the stage, our love for each other will never fade away.
All In for the Gambler
That year Dolly also sat down with Rogers on Today and answered the question fans had asked for three decades. She laughed that she was not his type and said they had become almost like brother and sister.
On the night of the concert, Rogers watched from a seat at the side of the stage as friends came out to sing his songs. Lionel Richie performed “Lady,” the song he wrote and produced for him. Don Henley, who had once lived with the Rogers family, sang “Desperado.” Chris Stapleton, Reba McEntire, Little Big Town, Alison Krauss, Idina Menzel, the Oak Ridge Boys and Kris Kristofferson were all part of the evening, which was taped for a later television broadcast.
Three Songs
Dolly came out after Stapleton’s version of “The Gambler.” She teased him first, joking that she hoped to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em when she got older, then asked the retiring Rogers if he wanted to hold ’em now.
They began with “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” the Grammy-nominated title track of his 2013 album, written about exactly what the two of them had. Then Dolly surprised him. She turned to Rogers and sang “I Will Always Love You,” the song she had written in 1973 as her goodbye to Porter Wagoner. Rogers was visibly moved, and his team later wrote that there was not a dry eye in the house.
Once he had collected himself, they closed with the Barry Gibb song that had made them a pair in 1983.
How about me and you go out like rock stars?
The microphones hit the floor. They took their bow and walked off together. Afterward Dolly told reporters she might still talk him into writing songs with her once he retired from public life.
Going Home to Georgia
Rogers finished his Christmas dates that December. In April 2018, doctors advised him to cancel his eight remaining shows, including a stop at the Stagecoach Festival, to focus on what his team called a series of health challenges.
He never returned to the stage. Kenny Rogers died at his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, at 10:25 p.m. on March 20, 2020, under hospice care and surrounded by his family. He was 81. Justin and Jordan were 15.
The next morning, Dolly posted a video. She said she had turned on the television to check on the coronavirus and learned instead that her friend was gone. Holding up a photo of the two of them, she said she had loved him with all her heart. Her written tribute closed with the words of the song she had sung to him in Nashville: she would always love him.
Dolly Parton died in Nashville on August 25, 2026, after a brief battle with cancer. She was 80.