Reba McEntire’s Relationship History, From Her Marriages To Current Flame Rex Linn

Reba McEntire smiles in a blue dress© Taylor Hill/Getty Images

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Reba McEntire has had an interesting love life. She married young, which was the norm in the ’70s. But her attitude to the marriage was anything but. Instead of putting her singing on the back burner to support Charlie Battles’ aspirations, McEntire prioritized her career. She started making a name for herself early on in their marriage and won her first Grammy not long before it ended. Her success caused tension in her relationship.

When Battles’ protectiveness over McEntire transformed into attempts to dominate her, she packed up her belongings and left — literally. She put her native Oklahoma in the rearview mirror to pursue a country music career in Tennessee. Shortly after her 1987 divorce, McEntire began a relationship with her then-manager Narvel Blackstock, marrying him in 1989. Blackstock became McEntire’s manager, husband, and father of her only child, roles he played well for 26 years.

The power couple shocked the music world when they announced their 2015 divorce, particularly because McEntire attributed the decision to Blackstock. They have both moved on since then. Blackstock is said to have married an old friend of McEntire’s, a relationship that may have contributed to their split. For her part, McEntire was in a relationship with oil geologist Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo for two years before she reconnected with Rex Linn, a friend-turned-boyfriend, during the COVID-19 pandemic. And McEntire hasn’t ruled out getting married again, though she’ll leave that up to Linn. For a superstar, McEntire has done a good job balancing her relationships and her career.

Reba McEntire Chose Her Career Over Her First Husband

Reba McEntire performing early in her career© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Reba McEntire was 21 and in the early stages of her career when she tied the knot for the first time in 1976. At 31, Charlie Battles was a decade her senior and busy himself with his steer wrestling career. Even though they had different schedules, they decided to go through with the wedding. “I loved Charlie with all my heart. I wanted to marry him. And it was — we had a lot of fun. We rodeoed together, we ranched together,” McEntire told CNN in 2002. Her career began to take off shortly after she walked down the aisle.

A year later, she released her first album, had her first top-20 hit, and performed at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry for the first time. The pace continued to pick up, taking her to places new and farther from home increasingly often. Battles began to resent McEntire. To ease the tension, she brought him onto her team, but that proved disastrous. “I tried hard not to let our professional problems affect the personal life we shared,” she wrote in her 1994 memoir, “Reba: My Story.”

But her work continued to cause issues. “He asked me to slow down off the road after I won Entertainer of the Year in ’86,” she recalled to CNN. And that became the reason McEntire’s first marriage ended. “I guess I kind of chose my career over my marriage,” she said. After divorcing in November 1987, she moved to Nashville and never looked back.

Reba McEntire Moved On With Narvel Blackstock Rather Fast

Narvel Blackstock and Reba McEntire smiling outdoors in 1995© Barry King/Getty Images

Less than two years after her divorce from Charlie Battles was granted, Reba McEntire said “I do” to Narvel Blackstock. The two, who had been working together since 1980, became more than collaborators after he divorced his wife in 1988. The relationship moved fast from there, with McEntire and Blackstock tying the knot in Lake Tahoe in June 1989. Eight months later, McEntire’s son, Shelby, was born.

McEntire had no reservations about starting a family with the person most involved with her work. In fact, she felt he was the perfect person to handle both with grace. “Narvel helps an awful lot because he is the one out there who responds, who tells me what works, what doesn’t work, what looks good. I’ve got to have that from someone I trust, and I do trust Narvel explicitly,” she told ET shortly after their nuptials. Her initial strictly professional trust in Blackstock later blended into something more complex. “That’s why I married him. I love him and I trust him very much,” she concluded.

Together, they transformed her into a worldwide star through their company Starstruck Entertainment, with Blackstock encouraging McEntire to take on more acting roles throughout the ’90s. In addition to country icon, McEntire added TV star to her long list of accomplishments when the sitcom “Reba” debuted on The WB in 2001. McEntire and Blackstock’s professional-slash-personal arrangement worked for more than two decades, but it all came crumbling down in the mid-2010s.

Reba And Blackstock Divorced After He Reportedly Fell For Her Friend

Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock sit in the audience together in December 2014© Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock may have built an empire together, but that became secondary when he fell for someone else — and she wasn’t just anyone. By January 2016, just months after announcing their separation, Blackstock had reportedly moved on with one of McEntire’s friends. “They are very serious,” a source told Page Six about Blackstock’s relationship with Laura Putty Stroud, a real estate agent. “It’s unclear when they started dating.”

McEntire never addressed the speculation regarding Stroud’s role in the end of her marriage, but she has been open about being blindsided by her husband’s decision to go his separate way. “The divorce was not my idea. I didn’t want it in any shape, form or fashion,” she told CMT’s Cody Alan in 2016 (via People). But Blackstock was unhappy in the marriage, and she had to accept that he needed to move on. “I just want everybody to be happy in their lives, because our lives are too short to be miserable,” she said.

McEntire and Blackstock’s messy split affected all aspects of her life. For starters, she had to fire the person who had been in charge of her career for close to three decades. It was a big adjustment she hadn’t been planning to make. “It wasn’t my choice to take over my career as manager. I didn’t see it coming, but you know, that’s life,” she told The Contributor in 2016.

Reba McEntire Was In A Relationship With Anthony ‘Skeeter’ Lasuzzo For Two Years

Two years after divorcing Narvel Blackstock, Reba McEntire met Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo during an August 2017 tour of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on an invitation from her friend Kix Brooks. “I was not looking. Not even interested,” she told People in April 2019. But the oil geologist and wildlife photographer won her over in spite of her aloofness. Thanks to his work as a photog, Lasuzzo knew where the animals tended to hang out, making for a spectacular day in nature. “We just had the best time,” she said.

Their interactions continued into the next few days. “And so two nights later, we all went out to dinner, and he bought my dinner,” she recalled. Her time in Jackson Hole was so memorable that McEntire returned two months later — accompanied by Lasuzzo once again. “I was there almost a week and we spent every day together,” she said. In January 2018, McEntire went public with her relationship with Lasuzzo, walking the red carpet at the Grammy Awards arm-in-arm with him.

The relationship continued to flourish into the following year. In the April 2019 interview, McEntire gushed about her beau and opened up about her feelings for him. “We’re totally in love — absolutely,” she said. But that changed shortly after. “Skeeter and I broke up in May, so, unfortunately, we will not be spending [the holidays] together,” she told Us Weekly in October 2019.

Reba McEntire Found Love Again In Rex Linn

Reba McEntire wasn’t single for long following her split from Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo. By early 2020, McEntire was in a relationship with Rex Linn, best known for his roles as Sgt. Frank Tripp on “CSI: Miami” and Kevin Wachtell on “Better Call Saul.” The two were no strangers. McEntire and Linn met three decades ago while working on the 1991 Western “The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw.” They maintained a friendship until they reconnected when McEntire appeared alongside Linn on “Young Sheldon” as a guest star.

This time, their connection turned into something more. “It was just like good friends getting back together having dinner in January, then we started texting and talking on the telephone, getting to know each other better during the quarantine,” McEntire said on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” that year. That dinner, however, proved to have been way more impactful than she was letting on.

It was that night that Linn and McEntire came up with cheesy nicknames for each other. “Had a fantastic dinner with this Oklahoma girl. Tater Tots and Ketchup included,” Linn captioned a January 2020 Instagram post. We later learned that Tater Tots is what he calls his gal. Whenever the server announced the potato appetizer was on the menu, the Southern girl jumped on it. “And so Rex said, ‘That’s your nickname from here on out,'” she said on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” in 2023. Her nickname for him in return? Sugar Tot.