Tragic Details About Reba McEntire's Life
There are few stars within the realm of country music as universally beloved as Reba McEntire. Since her emergence in the late 1970s, she's become Nashville royalty — she's literally been nicknamed the Queen of Country — and also demonstrated that singing and writing songs are far from her only talents. In fact, she's also carved out a successful career as a film and television actor, with credits including the cult-horror movie "Tremors" (and its various sequels), as well as her eponymous TV sitcom, "Reba," which ran for six hit seasons. She's also performed on Broadway, starring in a 2001 production of the musical "Annie Get Your Gun."
Yet amid all that success, McEntire has experienced some hard times as well. Through it all, she's displayed a rugged stoicism, no doubt resulting from her hardscrabble Oklahoma upbringing, leaving her stubbornly refusing to give in to grief, sadness, pain, or any negativity when biting into whatever lemons life threw her way. "And you don't complain. You don't b****. You don't cry," she once told The Washington Post of the work ethic she inherited from her parents. "You work twice as hard and try to find a better way to do things. And that's what I did."
Still, it certainly couldn't have been easy to live through the kind of heartbreak, loss, and regret that she's experienced — all under the harsh glare of the spotlight. To find out more, keep reading for a look at some of the tragic details about Reba McEntire's life.
Her father was 'cruel' toward her
Reba McEntire was born in Chockie, a small town in the southern part of Oklahoma. She was raised on her family's cattle ranch, where one of her chores was to castrate young bulls. As she recalled in an interview with The Washington Post, the part of the animals' anatomy that she sliced off didn't go to waste. "I was literally raised on mountain oysters," she said.
As the third of four children, McEntire experienced the paucity of parental awareness typical of middle kids. "I had to fight for attention," she recalled. That was particularly true of her father, Clark McEntire, a rough-and-tumble rodeo star who won three world championships for roping steer. As the singer's older sister, Alice Foran, told the Post, diplomacy was not their father's strong suit. "You didn't have to worry about what was on his mind," she said. "He would tell you in a heartbeat. By our standards, they would say he was cruel."
That tendency to share unvarnished opinions wound up rubbing off on her, at least to a certain extent. "That's where I get my bluntness," McEntire explained. "All my friends know exactly where they stand."
She came to regret 'abusing' her body when she was younger
Over the years, Reba McEntire learned to be in harmony with her body — something that wasn't necessarily the case when she was younger. "I wasn't always this in tune with my body, and I regret how I abused it while I was growing up," she wrote in her 2000 book "Comfort From a Country Quilt." McEntire detailed the manifold forms of that abuse, which included laying in the sun for hours without sunscreen, not drinking nearly enough water, and eating way too much fried food.
She also recalled lifting sacks of cattle feed, weighing between 30 and 50 pounds, in an improper manner at a part-time job while she attended college, admitting she was lucky to have avoided serious injury. "I didn't know any better," she admitted.
It was also during college when she eventually came to understand that the relationship she'd developed with alcohol was not a healthy one. "I overdid it on the alcohol when I was in college," she wrote, "and now I've learned to drink moderately and only socially."
Her focus on her career led to the end of her first marriage
When she was just 21, Reba McEntire got married to Charlie Battles, a 31-year-old rodeo steer wrestler who already had two kids from a previous marriage. As McEntire told Entertainment Weekly, Battles first got her attention when another cowboy made a disparaging remark about her — and he responded by hurling the guy through a plate-glass window. "We had a lot of fun," McEntire said in an interview with CNN. "We rodeoed together, we ranched together."
The same year that she and Battles tied the knot, McEntire's singing career began to take off. Within the next decade, she'd established herself as a major Nashville star; her relationship with Battles, however, suffered in direct proportion to her growing success. "I guess I chose my career over my marriage," she explained. They wound up splitting in 1987. "I was in and the next day I was out of love," she told People.
McEntire has since come to recognize that marrying a rodeo rider who was a decade her senior was a subconscious way of seeking the fatherly approval she never received. "I think I married my daddy," she observed in her Washington Post interview.
She was hit with backlash over her divorce
There's an argument to be made that Reba McEntire's marriage to a steer-roping cowboy made her more relatable to fans. That would certainly explain, at least partially, the backlash she received when she and Charlie Battles divorced after 11 years of marriage. It also didn't help that McEntire had often discussed her husband in interviews. Fans may have felt like they knew so much about her personal life that the divorce seemed like a betrayal.
McEntire addressed the negative response she'd been receiving from fans when she spoke with People in 1989. "I have talked so much about my private life [in the past] that when I got this divorce, I got lambasted," she observed. "My fans didn't understand."
In fact, she revealed that she'd received so many angry letters that she felt compelled to answer as many as she could. "I told them it was my business and they'd have to trust me," she explained. When one woman wrote McEntire to tell her than the only reason she chose to stay with her own husband was to emulate the country star, McEntire sent her a heartfelt response. "I told her, 'Don't stay because of me,'" she recalled.
The tragic deaths of her band and crew 'crushed' her
In 1991, tragedy struck Reba McEntire on a scale she'd never experienced when eight members of her band and crew perished in a plane crash; by a complete coincidence, she was scheduled to take a different flight the next morning and meet them for the next tour date. A loss of that magnitude hit her hard, and McEntire was devastated. "I didn't know if I was going to be able to continue," she said in an interview with People. "But it showed me how precious life is, and by the grace of God and my faith, I realized that they went on to a better place."
While McEntire may have considered packing it in, she simply couldn't stop. Performing was a distraction, taking her mind off the grief she was feeling during those brief portions of the day when she could shift her focus to something else. "I can't stop working when something like that happens," she told The Washington Post. "I needed it. We all needed it, to keep going, or I would have wallowed in sorrow."
Ultimately, those deaths brought her to a greater understanding of the fragility of life, and to savor every moment. "From that I learned that you need to take it one day at a time and be very grateful for the things that you have," she told People. "Tell folks in your life how much you love and appreciate them."
She mourned the death of her beloved father
It's fair to say that the one person most responsible for Reba McEntire's decision to pursue a career as a singer was her father, rancher and rodeo star Clark McEntire. As she recalled in her 2018 interview with The Washington Post, she competed in rodeo events in hopes of winning his approval, but he recognized she had far more talent as a singer than she did as a rodeo rider — and was not shy about telling her that. "Reba, why do you always want to do something you're not good at?" she recalled him asking her.
In 2014, McEntire's father died at age 86; he'd reportedly been ill for some time.
According to the singer, she inherited his competitive nature. "He made a living by competing and so have I," she told the McAlester News-Capital, sharing some of the memories she held of her late father. That competitive spirt, she revealed, was in play in one of her favorite memories of him. As she recounted, he was riding with her in a limo after a country music awards show, where she'd just won entertainer of the year and female vocalist of the year. "Daddy said, 'Sure is good to be riding home with the winner,'" she recalled.
Her husband's divorce filing left her blindsided and cost her millions
After her divorce, in 1989 Reba McEntire married Narvel Blackstock (whose son from a previous marriage, Brandon Blackstock, married and then later divorced Kelly Clarkson). He wasn't just her husband, he was also her manager, guiding her career to new heights over the course of their marriage. In August 2015, after more than a quarter-century of marriage, McEntire and Blackstock split up. Their divorce was finalized a few months later, with McEntire making it official in a Facebook post. "Narvel and I are divorced. It was final October 28," she wrote.
Shortly after, Page Six reported that it was Blackstock who'd filed for divorce, and that McEntire had been completely blindsided. "It was a bombshell. No one saw it coming," a source told the outlet, which also reported that Blackstock had already moved on and was involved with Laura Putty Stroud, who'd been a mutual friend. "The divorce was not my idea," McEntire confirmed in an interview with "CMT Radio Live" (via the Daily Mail). 'I didn't want it in any shape, form, or fashion. So it was really hard to make the adjustment."
Because her ex was so embroiled in her business affairs, the divorce proved a costly one. When the dust settled, McEntire wound up paying Blackstock a reported $47.5 million — half of her $95 million fortune.
Her second marriage was 'all business'
During a 2024 appearance on "The Drew Barrrymore Show," McEntire observed that her failed marriage to Narvel Blackstock was less about passion than it was about the bottom line. "I think it works for some people. They can be married or have a relationship and work together," she said of being married to her manager. "Our work was all the time ... it was a situation of: It was always business — whether we were getting ready in the morning, pillow talk, whatever, but it was business."
That emphasis on business was such an omnipresent factor in their relationship that it even extended to their downtime. "Even when we were on vacation to recharge the batteries, about three days into a vacation it was like, 'You know what we can do?'" she recalled.
Meanwhile, Blackstock's exit from their marriage also left McEntire when the management team who'd been supporting her career for years followed him out the door. "I had my production manager who left, I had my CEO who left, my manager and husband, and my father had died. So four men who were rock and pillars of my world were gone," she recalled in an interview with "Apple Fitness+ Time to Walk" (via Hello!).
Her mother's death left Reba McEntire so devastated she nearly stopped singing
Several years after losing her father, in 2020 Reba McEntire then had to endure the death of her mother, Jackie McEntire. She had been taken by illness. "The cancer might think it won the battle but we're giving God all the credit on selecting the time for her to go home to Him," Reba wrote in a tribute she shared on Facebook.
However, as she revealed during an interview with NBC's "Today," her mother's death was so debilitating for her that she contemplated giving up performing entirely. "Oh, I didn't want to [sing]," she said. "I told my little sister Susie when we were working at the house, I said, 'I don't know if I want to sing anymore.' She said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because I always sang for Mama.'"
That, she recalled, was something that went back as far as she could remember. As she told "Today," when she was growing up, their car wasn't equipped with a radio, so her mother came up with another solution to keep her kids under control on road trips. "It was four kids in the backseat, roughhousing and, you know, Mama would get us to sing to pass the time," she said. "We were the singing McEntires."
Career struggles made her feel like there was no place for her in country music
In 2015, Reba McEntire was enjoying the initial success of her new single, "Going Out Like That," when she was interviewed by Rolling Stone. During the interview, she discussed why she'd stopped recording new albums in 2010, revealing that she simply didn't see the point. Asked if she'd felt as if her days as a recording artist were over, she confirmed that she had. "I really did," she said. "Radio [is] so competitive, and they are looking at the younger generations for music."
Meanwhile, the rise of the so-called "bro country" movement — which has led to the popularity of artists such as Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, and controversy magnet Morgan Wallen — hadn't exactly been beneficial for the careers of Reba McEntire and other female country artists. In 2018, she shared a recollection to The Washington Post of speaking with Big Machine head honcho Scott Borchetta and complaining about how her music was no longer being played on country radio. "This 'bro' thing has lasted a lot longer than I thought it would," she said. "I'm ready for it to change."
She and beau Rex Linn experienced a tragic loss
Though Reba McEntire's divorce from Narvel Blackstock left her reeling, she eventually found love again. In 2020, she confirmed she was dating Rex Linn, an actor whose lengthy list of credits includes "Better Call Saul," "Young Sheldon," and more than 180 episodes of "CSI: Miami."
Together, McEntire and Linn have emerged as a power couple, becoming fixtures on the red carpet at country music awards shows. The two have even acted together in the ABC drama "Big Sky," with Linn playing Buck Barnes, husband of McEntire's character, Sunny Barnes.
While their relationship appears to be solid, they haven't been without their sad moments. That was the case in 2020, when McEntire took to Instagram to share some heartbreaking news that impacted both of them: the death of their dog, Riddler. "Only seven years old, lymphoma took his life less than three weeks after diagnosis," she wrote of the pup's passing. "He was a GRAND CHAMPION in the Show Ring, but a grander one in life."
Doctors' fears for her voice forced her cancel concerts
In October 2022, Reba McEntire hit the road for her "Reba: Live in Concert" tour. Audience response proved so enthusiastic that she added 14 extra dates for spring 2023. "I've had so much fun being back out on the road and doing what I love to do most, entertaining people," the singer said in a statement to the Deseret News, recounting her thrill at headlining Madison Square Garden on the tour, on which she was joined by bluegrass outfit The Isaacs and country singer Terri Clark. "Well, that's just the extra icing on an already triple-layered, stuffed and filled, iced and frosted cake!" she added.
The following month, however, McEntire experienced a crisis with her voice that forced her to make a tough choice. "My doctor has advised me to go on vocal rest, so I have made the difficult decision to postpone this weekend's shows," she tweeted, referencing a trio of concerts that had been rescheduled for December.
Fans responded with a tsunami of comments on social media, sharing their concerns for her health and proclaiming their support. Luckily, the issue didn't linger; the following week, she made it to Nashville to perform at the Country Music Association Awards, also fulfilling her duties as host.
She was hit with false claims that she dissed Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift may be one of pop music's all-time biggest stars, but she still holds a special place in the hearts of country fans due to the early success she experienced in Nashville with hits like "Tim McGraw" and "Highway Don't Care."
In March 2024, however, a bizarre rumor made it appear as if Reba McEntire had a bone to pick with Swift. It began when a social media account titled America Loves Liberty issued a post claiming that McEntire was "disappointed" with the way Swift behaved while watching boyfriend Travis Kelce help the Kansas City Chiefs win their third Super Bowl championship. The post even included a quote, purportedly from McEntire, that dissed Swift: "I let her have it afterward. She's an entitled brat."
McEntire addressed the rumor via Instagram, including a screenshot of that post and confirming it was completely bogus. "Please don't believe everything you see on the Internet," McEntire wrote in the caption. "I did not say this. Taylor is a wonderful artist, strong role model and has done so much good for so many people and the music industry."