The country music icon has revealed that time away from her husband of 57 years, Carl Dean, has helped strengthen their marriage.

"I'm just saying, anything new gets old," Dolly told E! News in an interview published on Thursday. "And I think if you just kind of stay together so much, you just nitpick every little thing and notice all that."

Dolly, 78, explained that making sure she and her husband, 81, have time away from each other helps keep their relationship "exciting".

"It's worked for us because we both do different things and it's exciting when we are together," she said. "So the fact that there's some little space that makes it exciting when you go home."

The Jolene hitmaker then went on to reveal what she and Carl, a former businessman, enjoy doing together.

"We just enjoy each other," she told the outlet. "I like to cook. And one of the things that we like to do - not necessarily a date night, we have a lot of date days - we have our little RV and we like to travel around. Going down and get some food or I'll make a picnic and we go down to the river and have a picnic and just kind of ride around and do our little things."

Elsewhere in the interview, Dolly was asked if her husband had seen her without her signature hair and make-up.

"Oh, of course," she replied with a laugh. "Carl has seen me every which way. In fact, I remember when we first got married, I had just got out of the shower and I didn't have my shoes on. He said, 'Well, you ain't big as a bar soap.'"

Dolly and Carl met in Nashville, Tennessee in 1964 and married two years later.