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Greatest Hits Oldies But Goodies Ever

In March 1975, Jacqueline McEntire traveled from Chockie, Oklahoma to Nashville with her daughter Reba, carrying a country music dream she had set aside years earlier for family. Jacqueline had once hoped to be a country singer herself. After marrying champion steer roper Clark McEntire, she traded the stage for a two-room schoolhouse, kept the ranch books, and raised four children: Alice, Pake, Reba, and Susie. Reba’s first music lessons happened in the back seat of the family car on long drives to rodeos, where Jacqueline taught her kids to harmonize and keep rhythm. By 1974, after years of working cattle from daybreak on the ranch, Reba was a college sophomore at Southeastern Oklahoma State University studying to become a schoolteacher like her mother. That December, she sang the National Anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. Country singer Red Steagall heard her and offered to help record a demo in Nashville, though he could only bring Reba solo without her siblings from the Singing McEntires. Reba doubted whether she could step into a studio alone, and Jacqueline steadied her confidence. On the trip to Nashville in March 1975, Jacqueline spoke honestly with her twenty-year-old daughter. She admitted she feared pushing Reba to chase her own unfinished dream, telling her she could always go home and teach school if singing was only for her mother. That honesty settled the question for Reba, who realized she was carrying a dream big enough for both of them. Those demo recordings led to her first contract with Mercury Records in November 1975, and through decades on country music’s biggest stages, Reba always said she and her mother were living that dream together.

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IN MARCH 1975, JACQUELINE MCENTIRE DROVE HER TWENTY-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO NASHVILLE — CARRYING THE COUNTRY MUSIC DREAM SHE HAD SET ASIDE FOR HER FAMILY.

Long before Reba McEntire signed her first recording contract on Music Row, the earliest version of her career belonged to her mother. Growing up in southeastern Oklahoma, Jacqueline had hoped to become a country singer herself before marriage and ranch life in the small community of Chockie reshaped her path.

After marrying Clark McEntire, a three-time world champion steer roper who earned his national titles in 1957, 1958, and 1961, Jacqueline traded any thought of the stage for practical work. She taught in a two-room schoolhouse, worked as a school librarian, kept the cattle ranch books, and raised four children: Alice, Pake, Reba, and Susie.

Music still filled the household, especially on long highway drives to Clark’s rodeo competitions across the country. From the front seat of the family car, Jacqueline turned the back seat into a rolling classroom, teaching her children how to hold harmonies and keep rhythm until Pake, Reba, and Susie began performing locally as The Singing McEntires.

By 1974, despite years of singing at local rodeos and dance halls, Reba was preparing for a quieter future. After growing up working cattle from daybreak on the family ranch, she was a college sophomore at Southeastern Oklahoma State University studying elementary education so she could teach school just like her mother.

That plan shifted in December 1974 at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. With the help of family friend and rodeo announcer Clem McSpadden, Reba was booked to sing the National Anthem in the arena, where country artist Red Steagall heard her voice cutting clearly through the crowd.

Later that evening at a hotel gathering, Reba sang an a cappella version of Dolly Parton’s “Joshua,” prompting Jacqueline to ask Steagall if he could help all three singing siblings land a record deal. Early in 1975, Steagall called Oklahoma with a harder offer: he could not take the whole group to Nashville, only Reba alone.

Stepping into a professional studio without Pake and Susie beside her left Reba uncertain whether she belonged there at all. When March 1975 arrived, Jacqueline packed the car and made the trip from Chockie to Nashville with her twenty-year-old daughter to record the demo session Steagall had arranged.

Sensing her daughter’s hesitation on the journey to Tennessee, Jacqueline spoke with quiet candor. She told Reba that if she did not truly want to go to Nashville, they could turn around right then and head home so she could finish college and teach school, admitting honestly that she was living all her own dreams through her daughter.

Instead of adding pressure, her mother’s honesty settled the question inside Reba. Realizing she was carrying a dream large enough for both of them, she walked into the studio and recorded the demo tape that convinced producer Glenn Keener to sign her to PolyGram/Mercury Records in November 1975.

In the years that followed that first Nashville session, Jacqueline remained a steady presence behind her daughter’s rise. As Reba moved from her January 1976 debut recordings to touring with Pake and Susie in a three-car caravan pulling a horse trailer of instruments, her mother stayed close to the family band and cheered every milestone.

Over four decades after their 1975 drive, Reba finally brought her mother to the microphone too. In 2017, ninety-year-old Jacqueline joined Reba and sisters Susie and Alice to record backup harmonies on the gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away” for the Grammy-winning album Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope, even sharing the Ryman Auditorium stage that February.

Across more than fifty years in country music, dozens of number-one hits, and a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame, Reba never separated her success from the woman in the passenger seat. Even after Jacqueline passed away in March 2020 at age ninety-three, that shared bond endured.

One honest conversation on a road to Nashville gave a schoolteacher’s daughter her own voice—and let a mother hear her dream sung out loud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4GMUlCBgd0

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Two years after her marriage ended in 2015, Reba McEntire finally went on a first date after meeting a retired geologist in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Since separating from her husband and manager Narvel Blackstock at age sixty, Reba had thrown herself into touring and gospel music, expecting to remain single for the rest of her life. During an August 2017 trip to the mountains with her friend Kix Brooks and his wife, Barbara, she was introduced to Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo, a retired oil geologist and wildlife photographer. When Reba returned to Jackson Hole a few days later, Skeeter invited her to dinner for her first date in two years. After thirty-five years in a partnership where marriage and music business contracts were constantly mixed together, being with someone outside the entertainment world gave Reba room to breathe. At sixty-two, she could sit across from a partner without talking about revenue or tour schedules. For nearly six months, they quietly traveled back and forth between Wyoming and Nashville before walking the Grammy red carpet together in January 2018. Over their two years together, they traded industry parties for snowy mountains in Wyoming and Montana, landscape photography trips to Iceland, Italy, and Africa, and major milestones including her Kennedy Center Honors in December 2018. On social media, fans often saw Reba through Skeeter’s camera lens, relaxed and smiling outdoors without heavy stage makeup. In November 2019, Reba shared that they had quietly parted ways a few months earlier as her busy work schedule and their different lifestyles pulled them apart. Unlike the heartbreak of 2015, their two years ended in warm friendship, restoring her faith in love just months before she reconnected with Rex Linn in early 2020.

When Reba McEntire confirmed her divorce on December 17, 2015, she shared the news beneath a smiling photo from Rome surrounded by the women who helped carry her through it. Four months earlier, in August 2015, Reba and her husband and manager, Narvel Blackstock, announced they had separated after 26 years of marriage and 35 years of working together. Their divorce was finalized on October 28, an ending Reba had not wanted that cut even deeper when Narvel soon began dating Laura Stroud, a Nashville realtor from Reba’s own circle of acquaintances. At sixty, Reba was suddenly left in her expansive Cherokee Dock home on Tennessee’s Old Hickory Lake without her marriage or the management partner who had guided her career for over three decades. Rather than leave her alone in that quiet house, close friends including longtime co-star Melissa Peterman, Janine Dunn, and loyal female staff members stepped in with home-cooked meals, constant humor, and travel plans. On mornings when the grief felt too heavy to face, her friends paired warmth with firm encouragement. Reba later called them angels who dried her tears and then told her plainly that she was strong, she could get through it, and they had taught her better than to give up on herself. Family closed ranks around her at the same time. Still mourning their father’s late 2014 passing, her sisters Alice Foran and Susie McEntire-Eaton joined her in prayer and in the recording studio, while Kelly Clarkson stayed fiercely loyal to Reba both at home and on stage. Backed by that circle of women, Reba stepped out of Starstruck Entertainment in early 2016 to form Reba’s Business Inc., taking command of her own career after 35 years and pouring her healing into the gospel album Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope.

Separated by more than 1,300 miles in March 2020, Reba McEntire and Rex Linn fell in love over morning FaceTime calls they named Coffee Camp. Just weeks after reconnecting over dinner in Los Angeles in late January 2020, Reba rushed home to Oklahoma where her mother, Jacqueline McEntire, passed away on March 14. Nationwide pandemic lockdowns immediately followed, canceling Reba’s tours and leaving her grieving alone on her family ranch while Rex isolated at home in California. Unable to fly between March and June, Rex started a daily morning video call across two time zones. Every day, he set his alarm between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time so he could be ready with a cup of coffee in front of his iPad by 7:30 a.m. in Oklahoma, never missing a single morning. To bring a smile into her quiet house, he called her “Tater Tot” after the dish she loved at their January dinner and even had a custom tater tot shirt printed to wear on screen. As they later shared on her Living & Learning podcast, those hours of honest conversation about their childhoods, old heartbreaks, and values allowed them to fall completely in love before ever holding hands or sharing a first kiss. When travel restrictions eased in June 2020, Rex admitted he felt as nervous as a young man driving to see the woman he had known as a friend for nearly thirty years. The moment they finally embraced in person turned three months of phone screens into a lasting life together. Years later, Rex still marks their anniversaries by looking back on those spring mornings of 2020, and the two still hold Coffee Camp every day at home or over FaceTime whenever touring and filming pull them apart.

Reba McEntire and Rex Linn stayed friends for nearly three decades after meeting in 1991, until one late dinner in January 2020 changed the rest of their lives. They first crossed paths while filming the 1991 Western television movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw alongside Kenny Rogers. For the next 29 years, they remained friendly colleagues who caught up in passing, until overlapping roles on Young Sheldon brought them to the same Los Angeles dinner table in late January 2020. That night stretched from a local restaurant to a late stop at a wine bar, where Rex nicknamed her “Tater Tot” after watching her light up over a plate of tater tots, and she called him “Sugar Tot” in return. What touched Reba even deeper was his quiet empathy as he asked about her hospitalized mother, Jacqueline, a kindness shaped by losing his own mother in 1998. On March 14, 2020, Jacqueline passed away from cancer at 93 just as pandemic lockdowns stranded Reba at her Oklahoma ranch and kept Rex in California. Every morning from March through June, Rex woke up at 5:30 in California to FaceTime Reba at 7:30 in Oklahoma for a daily ritual they called “Coffee Camp.” While she mourned in isolation, he had gifts and comfort food delivered to her porch and even ordered a custom tater tot shirt to wear on their video calls just to make her laugh. After a painful 2015 divorce that left her expecting to stay single, Reba fell in love again at 65 through hours of honest conversation across a phone screen. Once travel opened in June 2020, they reunited in Nashville, went public that October, and have since shared both their daily lives and the television screen on Big Sky and Happy’s Place.

On August 3, 2015, Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock released a polite joint statement ending twenty-six years of marriage, though Reba later admitted the divorce was never her choice. Released through Big Machine Label Group, the announcement confirmed they had been separated for several months after thirty-five years of working together, dating back to 1980 when Narvel joined her band on steel guitar. That composed tone protected Starstruck Entertainment, the Music Row company they built to manage Reba, Blake Shelton, and Narvel’s daughter-in-law, Kelly Clarkson, along with a staff that had depended on them for decades. Behind the scenes, the year had already taken a heavy toll. Reba had lost her father, Clark McEntire, in October 2014, then spent the spring and summer of 2015 promoting her album Love Somebody and performing in Las Vegas with Brooks & Dunn while her marriage quietly unraveled. Days after the August announcement, she reported on time to the set of the sitcom Baby Daddy to film a guest appearance centered on a wedding. She later told CMT host Cody Alan that she had not wanted the marriage to end in any shape, form, or fashion, but chose to let go without a public fight when it became clear the man beside her was no longer happy. The divorce was finalized on October 28, 2015, and Reba quietly confirmed it that December on Facebook beneath a photo with her close team. Even after Narvel began dating her acquaintance Laura Stroud, Reba offered no public bitterness and stayed close to their son, Shelby, as well as Narvel’s three older children, Shawna, Chassidy, and Brandon. In early 2016, at age sixty, she moved her management out of Starstruck to form Reba’s Business Inc. Leaning on daily prayer and the old advice of her late father to simply pick up her marbles and move on when the joy was gone, she rebuilt her career on her own terms while keeping the family she loved intact.

“One of the lighter details in the story of Alan and Denise Jackson is that Denise already carried the surname Jackson before the two met. The shared name was a coincidence, not a family connection, but it later became an easy source of warmth and humor in the story of their marriage. When they married in 1979, Denise did not need to take a new surname or update documents because her name already matched Alan’s. In practical terms, it was a small convenience. In emotional terms, friends and family could see it as one of those coincidences that make a relationship feel touched by fate. The detail should not be mistaken for the reason their relationship endured. Their life together required work, patience, and resilience through many changes. Yet small facts like this become part of family memory because they give a larger story a personal, recognizable texture. For listeners, the shared surname is a charming reminder that a long partnership can include humor as well as hardship. It is a coincidence that makes the early chapters of Alan and Denise’s story feel a little more connected, even before the wedding day arrived.”

“When Alan Jackson accepted recognition for a lifetime in country music, he used the moment to point beyond the stage and toward Denise Jackson. The gesture reflected the truth behind a career that had never been built by one person alone. Denise knew Alan before the awards, before the packed arenas, and before the world knew his name. She supported the uncertain early years, helped create opportunities for his music, and remained present through the changes that success brought to their family. Their story has not been without difficulty. They faced strain, separation, illness, and the ordinary pressures that can test any long marriage. Yet those experiences gave the public tribute a deeper meaning. It was not simply thanks offered at an awards show; it was recognition of a partner who had shared both the triumphs and the painful seasons that audiences rarely see. For Alan, a lifetime-achievement honor could acknowledge records, performances, and influence. By directing attention to Denise, he reminded the room that the achievements had a human foundation. Her steadiness, patience, and willingness to remain part of the journey mattered as much as the visible milestones. The emotion of the moment came from that simple truth: behind a celebrated career stood a marriage that had endured long enough to know the value of gratitude.”

When Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock’s twenty-six-year marriage began falling apart in 2015, their daughter-in-law Kelly Clarkson tried everything she could behind closed doors to keep the two together. Long before joining the family, Kelly had grown up in Texas idolizing Reba and toured alongside her in 2007 and 2008. In October 2013, Kelly married Narvel’s son, Brandon Blackstock, making Reba her stepmother-in-law. Across twenty-six years of marriage, Reba had never used the word stepchildren for Narvel’s three children from his previous marriage, raising them alongside her son Shelby and gathering the whole family, including Kelly’s baby born in 2014, for Thanksgiving and Christmas under one roof. When Reba and Narvel announced their separation in August 2015, the split was not what sixty-year-old Reba wanted. Watching the two pillars of their family drift apart, Kelly and Brandon stepped in, talking with both sides and pleading for a reconciliation to save the marriage. Nothing could change Narvel’s mind, and the divorce was finalized on October 28, 2015, ending twenty-six years of marriage and thirty-five years of working together. Three years later, at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors, Kelly walked onto the stage to sing one of Reba’s signature songs in tribute while Reba sat in the audience in tears. Even after Kelly went through her own divorce from Brandon in 2020, Reba refused to take sides against her and continued calling Kelly family, preserving the bond between two women who had tried to hold their home together.

Reba McEntire and Rex Linn had been friends since meeting on a movie set in 1991, yet their love story began over phone screens while she grieved her mother alone in 2020. The two first met filming The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw alongside Kenny Rogers and stayed warm acquaintances for nearly three decades. In January 2020, when Reba came to Los Angeles for a guest role on Young Sheldon, where Rex was a cast member, they went out to dinner to catch up, and a plate of tater tots at the table earned her the nickname “Tater Tot” while he became “Sugar Tot.” Weeks later, on March 14, 2020, Reba’s ninety-three-year-old mother, Jacqueline McEntire, passed away after battling cancer. At the exact same time, nationwide pandemic lockdowns went into effect, forcing the family to postpone the funeral indefinitely and leaving Reba isolated on her ranch in Oklahoma. Alone in California, Rex began calling and texting to check on her. Having lost his own mother in 1998, he understood that emptiness and listened for hours as she talked through memories of Jacqueline and their shared Oklahoma and Texas roots. From March through June 2020, without being able to see each other in person, the two in their sixties built a daily routine over video calls, pouring morning cups for what they called “Coffee Camp” and checking in again every evening. When travel restrictions eased in June 2020, Rex drove to Oklahoma to be with Reba and her sisters. The thirty-year friend who had kept her smiling through the loneliest mornings of her grief was already part of the family before he even walked through the door.