Reba McEntire on Being Engaged at 70: ‘God Saved the Best for Last’

Country music legend Reba McEntire is smitten with her fiancé, actor Rex Linn, 68, and she wants everyone to know it.

“I’m 70 years old, 50 years in the business, and I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life,” McEntire told USA Today. “God saved the best for last.”

McEntire and Linn got engaged on Christmas Eve in 2024 after five years of dating. Once he popped the question, Linn said, McEntire paused for “about 21 seconds” before “she said yes three times.”

The Reba actor talked about the black diamond ring Linn proposed with, saying “it sparkles all the time” and “it doesn’t matter that I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned it.”

She added, “I’m having a blast. I feel like a teenager again. It’s just a wonderful time.”

McEntire and Linn will appear together again in Season 2 of the NBC comedy Happy’s Place, in which McEntire plays Tennessee bar owner Bobbie and Linn portrays line cook Emmett.

“We’re great rehearsal partners,” McEntire said of their relationship. “We’ll go to bed with our scripts and wake with them. But many mornings, we sit out back and watch the hummingbirds while having coffee.”

As for wedding bells, they haven’t set a specific date yet because McEntire, who is also a coach on The Voice, only has “13 free days in 2026,” according to Linn. “We’re just enjoying the engagement right now. When we set a date, we’ll set a date.”

McEntire was previously married to Charlie Battles from 1976 to 1987 and to entertainment producer Narvel Blackstock, 69, from 1989 to 2015.

Linn was previously engaged to Renee Derese in 2010.

In 2024, McEntire shared with AARP how Happy’s Place came to be: “Ever since we stopped doing the Reba TV show, we have been looking for another project to do together because we had fun,” she said. “We had more stories to tell. When [producer] Kevin [Abbott]’s wife, Julie, came up with this idea, we all said, ‘Yes, let’s go for it!’ ”​

McEntire said she loves the sitcom genre, explaining, “Out of all the things I get to do, this is my favorite because it’s camaraderie, it’s fun, you just get to go to work and play, and it’s creative.… It’s very comforting to me. I absolutely love it. And getting to work with these folks? Icing on the cake.”

At the time, Happy’s Place had just debuted, and McEntire commented, “The thing that I can already see is going to happen on this show that happened on the Reba show — we’d all go on vacation together. The writers, the producers, showrunners, everybody, and with their families. We had such a good time.”

AARP offers resources on dating after 50 and how to find love at any age.