While living in separate states during the COVID-19 pandemic, the country legend says that she and her actor boyfriend would FaceTime “four to five times a day”

Reba McEntire and Rex Linn. PHOTO: ABC/GETTY

Slow and steady won the race to Reba McEntire’s heart.

The country legend, 67, opens up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday, about how she and her boyfriend of nearly three years, actor Rex Linn, took their time building a friendship before falling in love.

“I’d known Rex since ’91 when we worked on the movie The Gambler Returns with Kenny Rogers,” McEntire says. “Then in January 2020, I saw him again when I shot an appearance on the TV show Young Sheldon, which he is on. He said, ‘Let’s have dinner when you get through.’ And I said, ‘OK!’ He made me laugh my butt off on our first date, which we didn’t even know was a date.”

Shortly after their reunion, the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into lockdown, forcing McEntire and Linn, 65, to spend time apart in separate states.

“He was in Los Angeles, and I was in Oklahoma because my Mama had just died,” she says. “We didn’t get to see each other from March to June, but we’d talk over Zoom and FaceTime four to five times each day. We created a bond and an intimacy that was getting to know each other without being physical.”

While McEntire says she “really wasn’t interested in finding love again” after her divorce from her ex-husband of 26 years, music manager Narvel Blackstock, in 2015, she couldn’t be happier that Linn came into her life.

“He’s the love of my life,” she says. “We’re pretty much inseparable.”

It helps, too, that McEntire and Linn currently play husband and wife in the latest season of ABC’s drama Big Sky, which they’re filming in Albuquerque.

“To play husband and wife, it’s natural for us,” McEntire says. “Rex and I rehearse all the time to make sure that when we step on that set, we’re not wasting anybody’s time. We’re professionals. We have our stuff together, we show up on time, we’re ready. We’re not holding up anybody because time is money on the TV set.”

Though McEntire has a packed schedule of filming and performing on her Reba: Live in Concert tour which kicked off Oct. 13, she always makes time for “coffee camp” with Linn each morning.

“I make Rex coffee every morning,” she says. “He’ll offer to make it, and I’ll say, ‘Nope. I want to do that for you.’ I know I could easily say, ‘Yeah, you go get it. I’m tired.’ Nope. I always do the coffee camp.”

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire. REX LINN INSTAGRAM

In return, McEntire says Linn will “rub my feet or rub my shoulders” if she’s tired.

“The little things mean so much to me,” she says. “It’s also important to be attentive and listen to your partner’s stories, even if you’ve heard them 100 times. I’ll watch couples who have very successful marriages, and that woman will sit there and listen and smile at her husband’s stories, and I’m like, ‘How many times has she heard that?’ I learned a lot from that.”

With Big Sky, her new tour and a lasting love, McEntire says “this is one of the happiest times of my life” — and she has no plans to slow down.

“I asked Dolly Parton, ‘You ever think about retiring?’ She said, ‘What would I do where I could have so much fun?'” she recalls. “We’re having a blast. I’m about 10 years younger than Dolly, and she inspires me daily. As long as we can do what we do and still enjoy it, we can continue doing it.”

“I never would’ve thought in a million years I’d be doing an ABC drama at my age, but I am absolutely loving it,” she continues. “Now if I can just be a superhero or a supervillain in one of the Marvel movies, that would be the icing on the cake.”