Reba McEntire Has ‘Always Been Able to Have Her Cake and Eat It Too’
Reba McEntire is a country music icon who always gets her cake and eats it too — because what else would she do with it? The Grammy-winning Oklahoma native has experienced an enviable career and, as she says, “It is a good time to be Reba McEntire.”
Read on to learn more about McEntire’s postponed plans and how she used life’s lemons to make lemonade during the pandemic. Plus, what lessons have her good fortune taught her?
Reba McEntire made the best of pandemic lockdowns and a postponed tour in 2020
McEntire was meant to kick off a tour in March 2020, but that didn’t happen. Not only was she dealing with her mother’s death, but many states were also going into pandemic lockdowns. “I was in Oklahoma helping my brother and sisters take care of Momma, flying back and forth to Nashville (for) rehearsals,” McEntire recalled to USA Today.
Her mother died, and the tour was postponed. In the meantime, McEntire spent some time with family and kicked back. “I just chilled,” she told The New York Times in 2021. “I really liked to sit on that back porch.”
That was something the star hadn’t gotten to do. So, she thought, “Wow, what is it going to be like if we don’t ever go back to work?”
During that isolated time, she was getting better acquainted with her friend-turned-boyfriend, actor Rex Linn, through daily phone calls. She said she “loved the time off” and “could have gone either way: Go back to work or stay at home.”
Fortunately for her fans, she wanted to go back to work when the time came. She released Revived Remixed Revisited in October of 2021, then she hit the road on that postponed tour the next month.
Reba McEntire has ‘always been able to have her cake and eat it too’
McEntire knows she has an enviable life, despite experiencing a tragedy in her band and two divorces. As she told the NYT, “It is a good time to be Reba McEntire.”
She added, “I’ve always been able to have my cake and eat it too.”
She said she’s learned “to take this moment, this minute, this hour.”
“That took me 65 years to do. I do stray, but I’m really focusing on loving this [moment],” she shared, “because if I stay out of this moment and just look forward, then I’m missing what’s happening now.”
Reba McEntire is kicking off the second leg of her postponed tour this fall
McEntire is now getting ready to kick off the second leg of that postponed tour, which she shared with fans on Twitter. She’s bringing along Terri Clark for the fall tour, which opens on Oct. 13, 2022.
“I can’t wait to see everyone out on the road again this fall,” she said in a statement (per PEOPLE.) “We had so much fun in the spring, and I’m ready to get back out there …”
