Reba McEntire First Heard Herself on the Radio at Home, With Family

Oklahoma-born Reba McEntire began her Nashville recording career in 1975, when she signed a contract with Mercury Records. Her first single, “I Don’t Want to Be a One Night Stand,” didn’t exactly set the country music world on fire, though: It peaked at No. 88 on the charts.

Clearly, things have improved considerably since then for McEntire! So, where was the future queen of country music when she heard her first single on the radio for the very first time? Below, she remembers.

I was in Chockie, Okla., where I grew up. My mama, Jacqueline McEntire, Susie, my little sister, and I were there at the house. We had an old radio that would get better reception if you stood close or even put your hand on it.

We were listening to KVOO out of Tulsa, Okla., and “I Don’t Want to Be a One Night Stand” came on. We sort of melted to the floor and cried. I can see us there on the floor, laughing and crying like it was yesterday! We’ve always been a very supportive family.

This story was originally written by Pat Gallagher, and revised by Angela Stefano.

Read more: After first meeting on the set of the 1991 film The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, Reba McEntire and Rex Linn reconnected in 2020. Now, the singer is opening up about their love story.

Reba McEntire has found her special somebody in boyfriend Rex Linn.

While giving a rare glimpse inside their romance, the country music superstar reflected on reconnecting with the actor—whom she first met more than 30 years ago on the set of the 1991 movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw—in 2020 after they both appeared on Young Sheldon.

“Rex texted me and said, ‘You’re coming to LA? Let’s have dinner,'” Reba recalled to Today.com in an interview published Oct. 10. “I don’t know what it was about it….I wanted to get in to see Rex so bad I could hardly stand it. We were inseparable.”

And while the coronavirus pandemic didn’t make the start of their relationship easy, the “I’m a Survivor” singer noted the two texted and called every day. In fact, she said that she still has his number saved on her phone under “Rex Linn, long-distance boyfriend.”

As for Rex, he keeps Reba’s contact information under “Tater Tot”—with the outlet noting the couple call each other “Sugar Tot” and “Tater Tot,” or just “The Tots,” as nicknames.

Life lately has been tasty for the duo, too. Not only did Reba and Rex appear together in the ABC thriller Big Sky, but she also recently joined The Voice as a coach and released an album and a book called Not That Fancy. And the Grammy winner noted they like to keep their date nights exactly that, telling Today.com they have a yearly tradition of going to Sonic on Valentine’s Day and enjoy the simple pleasures of dinner and a movie at home or a picnic in the park.

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But would Reba—who was previously married to Charlie Battles and then Narvel Blackstock—and Rex ever want to tie the knot?

“We get along so well the way we are,” she told E! News in January. “You know, if we sometime—it just is a whim and he says, ‘I wanna get married,’ yeah, that’s fine. If I wanna get married, I’m sure he’d say, ‘That’s fine.’ But we get along so well right now, why rock the boat?”