Every Time Reba McEntire and Boyfriend Rex Linn Shared the Screen
After meeting on set, Reba McEntire and Rex Linn have continued to enjoy sharing the screen.
McEntire and Linn originally met while filming 1991’s The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, but they didn’t pursue a romance until nearly three decades later. The singer was previously married to Charlie Battles from 1976 to 1987 and music manager Narvel Blackstock from 1989 to 2015. She shares son Shelby, born in 1990, with Blackstock.
After reconnecting, McEntire and Linn have had fun starring in the same projects, including Big Sky and Happy’s Place.
“Rex and I are best friends. We have the same likes and dislikes. We’re foodies. We love to cook. We each wanted to be a cowboy and a cowgirl,” McEntire exclusively told Us Weekly in an October 2024 cover story. “Then we got into the entertainment business instead. Our dynamic works on and off screen.”
McEntire gushed to Us about how her connection with Linn changed her for the better.
“Rex brings out the little girl in me and I have fun. I’m dorky, I’m goofy. He is too. We love to laugh, and we love each other,” she concluded. “We both love watching television. We’re always on the lookout for a new series or movie to watch. He says that it’s his homework, watching other actors and learning from them. I do it for pure enjoyment. Right now we’re streaming The Penguin.”
Keep scrolling to see every time McEntire and Linn have shared the screen:
Credit: Peacock
‘The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw’
McEntire and Linn first crossed paths on the set of Kenny Rogers‘ western playing Burgundy and Henry, respectively.
“We kept in contact over the years, we both know the same people,” McEntire shared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in 2020. “So [when we reconnected] it was just like good friends getting back together and having dinner … then we started texting and talking on the telephone and getting to know each other better during the quarantine.”
Credit: Netflix (2)
‘Young Sheldon’
The Big Bang Theory prequel paved the way for McEntire and Linn’s offscreen reunion. Linn played a high school principal on the show, while McEntire joined the cast as a friend for Annie Potts’ character. (Fans might have also noticed that McEntire’s Reba costar Melissa Peterman was also a recurring cast member on CBS’ Young Sheldon, but they never acted alongside each other. The trio collaborated on The Hammer and Happy’s Place as well.)
“Rex and I have known each other since 1991 when we were in The Gambler movie together with Kenny Rogers and then have known each other, kept in contact. And then in 2020 when [my mom] got sick, he called me,” McEntire recalled on Today in 2021. “We’d gotten to see each other before because we’re both on Young Sheldon. So starting in March of 2020, we just kept talking and visiting and finally got together, see each other in June. And we’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since.”
Credit: Hulu
‘Big Sky’
After McEntire joined season 3 of Big Sky as Sunny Barnes, Linn was cast as her onscreen husband.
“We’re having a blast,” McEntire told Deadline in 2022. “We’re still in the middle of shooting. We were on set last night and there was a full moon. I think we broke around 12:54 a.m. mountain time. It was a long night but so beautiful. We are really loving it.”
Linn, meanwhile, gushed about his girlfriend’s performance, saying, “Wait until you see her in this!”
Credit: Hulu
‘Reba McEntire’s The Hammer’
Inspired by the life of Nevada state court judge Kim Wanker, one of the last traveling circuit judges in the U.S., Reba McEntire’s The Hammer reunited the country singer with Linn and Peterman.
“Well, I thought it was really neat that he made a very handsome mysterious cowboy too,” McEntire told Yahoo Entertainment in 2023 before admitting she was “a little rusty” with her acting. “[Rex] helped me tremendously. By the time we got to do our scenes together, it was just like talking to each other. I love working with Rex. He’s a great actor, and I just get the biggest kick out of the way he chooses to do a scene and then change it up and do it some other way. I’ve learned a lot from him.”
Credit: Casey Durkin/NBC
‘Happy’s Place’
The NBC sitcom, which debuted in 2024, featured McEntire as a tavern owner who inherited her father’s business and discovered a new professional partner in a half-sister (Belissa Escobedo) she didn’t know she had. Linn, meanwhile, played a cook named Emmett who had an obvious crush on McEntire’s character, Bobbie.
McEntire said it was a seamless transition starring on a sitcom with Linn, telling Us in 2024, “We love to act. We want to be prepared. So, he and I rehearse a lot. We did a Lifetime movie together. We did Big Sky on ABC. We’ve both been on Young Sheldon, and now we’re doing Happy’s Place together, so we get real serious about rehearsals and we know our dialogue for sure. To have fun and be comfortable with dialogue, you’ve got to know it. We work hard on that.”
