Reba McEntire and her husband, Narvel Blackstock, divorced in 2015. Narvel was Reba’s manager, so when their marriage ended, so did their professional relationship.
Six years have passed since Reba and Narvel split. The country legend has found new love with actor Rex Linn, and has taken control of her career.
During a recent appearance on Apple Fitness+’s Time to Walk experience, Reba spoke about how her divorce affected her career. People cites what she said:
“Things started going south with my marriage. Narvel Blackstock, my manager and husband at the time — we got a divorce, and the shocker of it all was, there were four people who were taking care of all my business,” she said. “I had my production manager who left, I had my CEO who left, my manager and husband, and my father had died. So four men who were rock and pillars of my world were gone.”
After she and Narvel divorced, Reba was left to take control of her own career:
“I started taking over signing the checks and then I started realizing how much water cost, and the electric bill, and all the things that was going on in my life,” she said. “I made the money, I brought it home. So it was a huge, huge change for me.”
It was tough for Reba to cope with the end of her marriage while also dealing with her new professional responsibilities. But her faith helped her push through:
“Everything that I was dealing with privately, personally — I had to run it all through God. I had to say, ‘OK big boy, I can’t handle this. This is way over my pay grade — I don’t know what to do,’” Reba said. “And I would wait, and He would guide me. And so without my faith, I have no idea where I would be or my career would be, at this time today.“
Now Reba is stronger than ever, and continues to be a force to be reckoned with in the country music world. She is preparing to release a new triple album set called Revived Remixed Revisited. The albums in the collection will contain reworked versions of some of her biggest hits.
Check out the video below to watch her perform her “revisited” version of “I’m a Survivor,” which was the theme song from her Reba sitcom. The song is a fitting one for Reba, since she’s proven to be a “survivor” after everything she’s been through.