Reba McEntire Reveals She Was Secretly Engaged to Rex Linn for Months
Reba McEntire and Rex Linn may have confirmed their engagement at the 2025 Emmys last month, but the couple has been keeping this a secret from the world for a while now.
“I’ve never been loved by a man like Rex Linn,” she gushed to People about her fiancé. “Rex is a very tender-hearted man, and I just love him with all my heart. He’s a good guy. Real bashful though.”
Turns out, the couple has been engaged for nearly a year. McIntire revealed that Linn popped the question back in December 2024, nine months before they shared the news publicly.
McEntire went on to call working with Linn on NBC’s Happy’s Place a “blast,” adding, “Wherever we go, that is our Happy’s Place.” She continued, “Getting to work with Rex, drive to work with Rex and do the show, the rehearsals, drive home, talk about it, rehearse together — that’s what’s really special for me. I’ve not had that before.”
McEntire plays Bobbie, a woman who inherits her late father’s tavern, on Happy’s Place. In addition to navigating her relationship with her secret half-sister, Isabella (Belissa Escobedo), the show follows Bobbie as she works alongside the bar’s staff, which includes a cook named Emmett (Linn).
“We are a tight-knit family, an acting team, and we have so much fun together. It’s natural,” she gushed about the Happy’s Place cast. “Anytime I get to step on that set, I feel like home. It’s my happy place.”
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While McEntire and Linn’s Happy’s Place characters have begun to develop a budding romance, the real-life couple actually started dating in 2020, years after they first met working on the 1991 film The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw.
McEntire called Linn the “love of my life” in an October 2024 interview with Us Weekly, adding, “We’ve been together for almost five years. … 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. Then we got into the entertainment business instead. Our dynamic works on and off-screen.”
Back in May, McEntire said she and Linn “get along in every aspect” in an interview with Fox News Digital. “He’s a better cook than I am, so I like that, for sure. We love Longhorns, we love the cowboy way of life, cowgirl way of life, and we both got into the entertainment industry,” she said.
Noting that they are “the perfect union,” the Grammy winner quipped, “We do argue now. We argue a lot, but we have fun doing that too.”
McEntire and Linn’s engagement news broke on the 2025 Emmys red carpet on September 14, as E! News‘ Zuri Hall referred to Linn as McEntire’s “fiancé” during an interview. McEntire was also spotted sporting a ring on her left hand at the awards show.
Happy’s Place, Season 2 Premiere, Friday, November 7, 8/7c, NBC
