Christopher Polk/Getty Images
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
From 1989 to 2015, country music superstar Reba McEntire was married to her former bandmate and manager Narvel Blackstock. And while 26 years is certainly an impressive run, especially in the world of often brief celebrity marriages, the sad truth about McEntire’s marriage to Blackstock is that there were always some telltale signs it was never going to last.
For starters, McEntire’s relationship with Blackstock got off on kind of an awkward foot, and the “Fancy” singer found herself stuck in a bit of a love triangle with Blackstock and her first husband, Charlie Battles, to whom she was married from 1976 to 1987. In her 1995 autobiography “Reba: My Story,” McEntire recalled that, being a married woman, she had no interest in Blackstock when they first met in 1980. Over time, though, McEntire’s relationship with Battles began to break down, while Blackstock became far more involved in the country star’s life and career.
Blackstock offered his own perspective on the matter in McEntire’s book. “It was awkward because Charlie and I had been buddies,” he wrote. However, McEntire herself maintained that her decision to end things with Battles had nothing to do with anything that may have been blossoming between her and Blackstock. “I had to tell Narvel straight out, ‘This is what I wanted to do with my life, for myself. I didn’t divorce Charlie because of you,'” the singer explained in her memoir. Still, McEntire and Blackstock’s romance undeniably had a complicated beginning, which clearly weighed on him for a time.
Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock mixed business with romance
Another sign Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock’s marriage wasn’t necessarily built to last was the fact that, as previously mentioned, Blackstock was McEntire’s manager and business partner in addition to being her spouse. Just about anyone who has ever had to navigate a workplace romance will tell you that it can be very difficult to balance personal feelings with professional responsibilities. And nearly a decade after her divorce from Blackstock, McEntire confessed that romance often took a backseat to business over the course of their decades-long relationship.
“I think it works for some people — they can be married, or have a relationship, and work together. Our work was all the time,” McEntire said on “The Drew Barrymore Show” in 2024, elaborating, “Our marriage was 26 years. We started out working together in the band — he was part of the band, and then became my manager later on, then my husband. But it was a situation of– it was always business. Whether we were getting ready in the morning, pillow talk, whatever. But it was business.”
Fortunately, McEntire seems to have found that all-important balance with new beau Rex Linn. Linn and McEntire have made it clear that they love working together — though, to be fair, their professional relationship is simply that of TV co-stars, as opposed to the manager-client relationship McEntire had with her ex-husband. “He’s wonderful, helps me a lot,” McEntire said of Linn in a May 2024 interview with Extra TV.
News
He Forced Me to the Ground for Walking in My Own Country — He Had No Idea I Was the FBI Agent About to Destroy Everything He Built
At 6:47 on a Tuesday evening, somebody in Oakridge dialed 911 because a Black man in a gray hoodie was walking too slowly past the entrance to Whitfield Estates. That was the whole emergency. No weapon. No fight. No broken…
A Teacher Tore Up My Homework and Called Me a Liar in Front of My Entire Class — She Had No Idea My Father Was a Four-Star General About to Walk Through the Door
The tearing sound was small, but it changed the room. It was the kind of sound children knew instinctively to fear: paper ripped by an adult hand, slow enough to be deliberate, loud enough to be public. Every head in…
He Ordered Me to Kneel in a Seattle Police Station Because He Thought I Was Nobody — He Had No Idea I Was the Federal Prosecutor Who Came to End His Career
By the time Samantha Reynolds stepped out of the Uber, the rain had already found the back of her neck. Seattle rain had a way of doing that. It never arrived with drama. It did not announce itself like a…
I was laughed at in a hall in the United States just because I was a Black boy from Chicago’s South Side — but no one knew that was the day everything began to change.
The first thing Dr. Richard Caldwell noticed about the boy was not his color. It was the shirt. A white button-down, freshly washed, carefully ironed, and still much too large for him. The collar sat wrong against his thin neck….
I stood inside a bank in the United States… and watched a 10-year-old boy get humiliated for his shoes—until everything flipped in a way no one expected.
When Wesley Brooks pushed open the doors of First National Heritage Bank, he did not know he was walking into the worst hour of his life. The glass was heavier than it looked. He had to lean his slight weight…
TRAGIC DISCOVERY: The Chase has left fans stunned with details surrounding the d3ath of star contestant Tim McCarthy, 64, just days before his episode was due to air.
The Chase viewers were left heartbroken on Wednesday night (August 27) after learning that contestant Tim McCarthy had d!ed just weeks after filming his episode. Tim, from Tyldesley in Greater Manchester, p@ssed away in July following a long illness….
End of content
No more pages to load
