Reba McEntire

Reba McEntire is an American country singer, songwriter, and actress whose five-decade music career has produced 35 number-one Billboard Hot Country Songs singles, three Grammy Awards, 16 American Music Awards, 12 ACM Awards, and her 2011 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She was born Reba Nell McEntire on March 28, 1955, in McAlester, Oklahoma, into an Oklahoma rodeo family. Her father Clark Vincent McEntire was a three-time World Champion Steer Roper and her mother Jacqueline Smith McEntire was a former teacher and aspiring singer.

Her early career across 1971–1976 with the Singing McEntires (her sibling group with sister Susie and brother Pake) produced multiple regional Oklahoma rodeo-circuit performances. Her 1974 National Finals Rodeo national-anthem performance at age 19 in Oklahoma City was witnessed by country music star Red Steagall — who introduced her to Mercury Records the following month. Her 1976 Mercury Records signing launched her early-career commercial period, although her first six Mercury albums across 1977–1983 produced only modest country-chart success.

Her 1984 transfer to MCA Records under producer Jimmy Bowen launched her commercial breakthrough. The 1984 album My Kind of Country produced her first two Billboard Hot Country Songs number-one singles "How Blue" and "Somebody Should Leave." Her 1986 album Whoever's in New England produced her first Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.

The March 16, 1991 plane crash in San Diego — which killed eight members of her band and tour manager — shaped her subsequent career-and-family priorities. Her parallel acting career produced multiple American films (most notably the 1990 horror film Tremors), the six-season WB and CW sitcom Reba (2001–2007, in which she played divorced mother Reba Hart), and her 2008–2010 Broadway lead role in the revival of Annie Get Your Gun. She married steel-guitarist Charlie Battles in 1976 (divorced 1987); she married steel-guitarist Narvel Blackstock in 1989 (divorced 2015); and she has been with actor Rex Linn since 2020.

Her name Reba derives from the Hebrew Rivka (a short form of Rebecca, meaning "to bind" or "snare"). Reba was a popular American girls' name through the early 20th century.