How Reba McEntire Knew Rex Linn Was ‘The One’
Reba McEntire has been married twice already, but that hasn’t made her shy away from love. In fact, she’s fairly certain her current love is her forever love, and she’s ready to walk down the aisle again. So, how did she know Rex Linn was the one? Simply put, he makes her laugh.
How did Reba McEntire and Rex Linn meet?
Reba and Rex didn’t fall for each other until 2020, but they’d known each other for decades by the time they were romantically linked. They first met on the set of The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, a TV movie filmed in 1991. They became friends, but romance didn’t bloom back then. They stayed in touch over the years, though mostly on the periphery of each other’s lives.
In 2020, about five years after her split from Narvel Blackstock, she and Linn reconnected, and the attraction was instant. As she once told E!, “It was just like a magnet.” They had dinner together in January 2020, and then the pandemic shut down the world. It kept the fledgling couple apart until June, but the distance didn’t derail their romance.
They went public with their relationship in the fall of 2020 and have been a red carpet staple ever since. In December 2024, Linn popped the question, and McEntire said yes. They confirmed their engagement publicly in 2025. They haven’t made it down the aisle just yet, but it’s coming. McEntire has said wedding plans keep getting pushed because Linn insists “work comes first.” When it does happen, she’s promised it’ll be nontraditional: a multi-day celebration at their ranch, complete with their animals.
Why didn’t they get together sooner?
Reba and Rex are confident their relationship will last. McEntire has even called Linn the love of her life. So why didn’t it happen sooner? McEntire has apparently wondered the same thing, and she addressed their decades-long friendship during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show.
McEntire revealed that Linn has a theory: they didn’t fall in love sooner because she “probably” would have “killed” him. McEntire jokingly called him “a wild man” and suggested they both had some growing up to do before the timing was right.
These days, the couple shares a workplace, too. On Happy’s Place, Linn plays Emmett, the soft-spoken cook at the tavern McEntire’s character inherits. McEntire has joked that Linn is “the sane one” on the show, while she gets to be in the middle of the chaos.
