Reba McEntire got real about her first impression of her boyfriend.
During an appearance on "The Drew Barrymore Show," McEntire shared what it was like reconnecting with her now boyfriend, Rex Linn, on the set of "Young Sheldon" right before the COVID-19 lockdown.
"We were all going to go out and have dinner. Melissa [Peterman] says that that was our first date, because, I mean, I was like a magnet to Rex. I just couldn't get close enough to him," she told Barrymore. "I don't know why. We had talked and communicated throughout the years, had a mutual friend, Ed Gaylord, and we stayed in contact. But for some reason, that night was just so special."
She has since asked Linn why they didn't take their relationship to the next level earlier, telling Barrymore that he had responded by saying, "Probably because you would have killed me." McEntire didn't disagree with his assumption, saying, "He's a wild man. He's a 12-year-old."
Both the singer and Linn have been in serious relationships in the past, with McEntire having been married twice and Linn having been engaged four times.
After dinner, McEntire and Linn went to a wine bar, where she excitedly revealed her love of tater tots. Upon hearing that, McEntire recalled Linn telling her, "I’m famous for giving people their nicknames, and that's your nickname."
"Later on during the pandemic, I was in Oklahoma with my sister Susie, and she said, ‘You know he gave you Tater Tot, let’s give him Sugar Tot,'" she said. "So we're the tots. Sugar and Tater. How about that? Is that not cute?"
The two also bonded over their mutual love of the Western lifestyle, explaining they both wanted careers in the rodeo, but since they didn't have a lot of talent for it, she went into music, and he became an actor.
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McEntire and Linn first met in 1991 when they both starred in the movie "The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw" with Kenny Rogers. They were both in relationships at the time but were both available when they reconnected on the set of "Young Sheldon."
"It's good to have a person to talk to, laugh with, get into subjects about what's going on," she said on an episode of her podcast, "Living & Learning," in October 2020. "Discussions about our past, our family, funny stories, him being an actor, me being an actress. And he's very into my music. I'm very into his career."
Due to the pandemic, the beginning of their relationship was long-distance, with Linn living in Los Angeles and McEntire living in Oklahoma and Nashville. The "Fancy" singer told People in October 2023, after meeting in January 2020, that they didn't see each other again in person until June of that year.
"So it was telephones, Zooms, texting, so we got to really know each other before it was any physical contact," she explained.
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The two would go on to star together in "Big Sky," playing husband and wife in the show's third season. "Every scene was fun for me, because I was working with her," Linn told Country Now in January 2023, adding the two of them would "wink at each other in the middle of a scene."
