Reba McEntire on finding love again in her 60s: ‘timing is everything’
Lyndsey Parker, the editor in chief of Yahoo! Music, is low key one of the best celebrity interviewers working (shoutout also to Josh Horowitz of MTV). Parker does a lot of research, she’s genuinely interested in the celebrities and their projects and she’s a great listener who asks thoughtful follow questions. Parker talked to Reba McEntire about her partner, Rex Linn, with whom Reba is currently starring with in their Lifetime movie The Hammer. Reba and Rex also played a married couple on the series Big Sky. They first got to know each other in 1991 when they were working together in Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler. Reba was newly married to her second husband at the time and told Lyndsey that there were no sparks with Rex. It wasn’t Reba and Rex worked together again in 2020 that it became something more. Reba’s friends told her Rex was asking her on a date but she didn’t realize it at first! I loved watching this interview because you could really see Reba light up when she talked about her relationship with Rex and what a great actor he is. Here’s more from Yahoo! and you can watch the interview video below.
The real-life, late-in-life love story between McEntire and Linn truly is the stuff of Lifetime movies. While McEntire admits that when she met Linn 32 years ago — not long after she’d married her second husband, Narvel Blackstock — no sparks flew, they “just kept the friendship. And timing is everything, and everything happens for a reason.”
When McEntire shot an appearance on Linn’s show Young Sheldon in January 2020, about four years after her 26-year marriage to Blackstock had ended, she and Linn reconnected and went out for dinner, although she “didn’t know then that it was a date.” In fact, when Linn first asked her out, she declined. “I said, ‘Can I take a raincheck?’ I’d had a long day, and I was exhausted.” She eventually met up with Linn, Young Sheldon actress Melissa Peterman (McEntire’s former Reba sitcom costar and current The Hammer castmate), and her tour manager, Marne McLyman, at a restaurant in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
“I left [McLyman] out at the valet station; I just had to get in and see Rex. And, you know, Melissa and Marne said it was a date!” says McEntire. “We just had a really nice evening, and I hugged his neck goodbye to get in the car with Marne to go back to the hotel. And I said, ‘Come see me.’ And on June 16, he did.”
McEntire and Linn’s second in-person date probably would have happened a lot sooner than June 2020, if unfortunate life and world circumstances hadn’t intervened. But they maintained a remote courtship until Linn could take McEntire up on her invitation. Upon McEntire’s return to Nashville after their fateful Sherman Oaks dinner, she and Linn “kept texting,” but sadly, she soon learned that her mother had bladder cancer. “I was texting him and he said, ‘Hey, call me any time, if you need to talk.’ And I just called him and we talked every day; I think that was around the 1st of February. And we talked every day since,” McEntire recalls.
McEntire’s mother died on March 14, 2020, but that same month, the COVID-19 pandemic began, so Linn couldn’t come out to Nashville to visit. But he and McEntire eventually reunited in June. “I’ve just loved him even more for getting on a plane during the pandemic,” McEntire gushes. “So, it was true love, and it’s lasted, and we’re having more fun now than we did when we first got together.”
McEntire, now age 67, didn’t expect to fall in love again, with 66-year-old Linn or anyone else — “I wasn’t looking for it, wasn’t looking at all,” she insists — and when Yahoo Entertainment asks her to give advice to any singles of a certain age who might think their chances of finding romance have passed them by, she chuckles, “Well, I promise you, I’m the last person you need to start asking love advice, after being divorced twice!”
That’s really sweet that they talked on the phone every day since they met and their love story is so cute. As an older woman who has dealt with the dating scene, it’s an absolute sh-tshow and you have to have boundaries and put things in perspective. It’s not unique to my age and this job helps a lot, because I’ve learned that celebrity women deal with the same disappointments, ridiculous situations and seemingly impossible odds. (Emily Ratajkowski nailed it in her recent comments.) I think believing it’s possible for you helps you find and recognize someone when they’re right for you. It’s just heartening to see celebrities like Reba say they’ve found love again. I also like and agree with the advice she gave about owning your sh-t, talking things out and just genuinely appreciating the other person’s company. That really does come with age and experience.
Brandi Benton/ Images, Abby Grant/Cover Images and Getty
