Reba McEntire was forced to correct Savannah Guthrie on-air after the Today show host incorrectly referred to her longtime partner, Rex Linn, as her husband.
The country star, 70, who got engaged to Linn, 69, last December, spoke to co-anchors Guthrie and Carson Daly on Monday about her numerous ongoing projects, including the second season of her sitcom Happy’s Place, in which she co-stars alongside Linn.
“You also met your husband there. So Rex, good ole Rex...,” Guthrie said, before McEntire quickly stepped, saying: “Now, wait a minute. Before everybody has a conniption fit at home, we’re just engaged.”
Guthrie, 53, apologized for her error, as McEntire quipped that her brief panic came out of worry that “my family will go, ‘Wait, you didn’t tell us?!’”
The cameras then panned to Linn, who was also in the studio, looking puzzled, before a wide grin spread across his face.
Speaking about working with her fiancé, McEntire called it a “blast.”
“He is a workaholic, and he loves to rehearse,” the Voice coach said of Linn. “Me, not so much on the rehearsal part, so he really makes sure that I know my lines, that I’m ready to go when we have a tape day. We have a blast. We’re so grateful and thankful that we get to go to work together, work together, and then go home together.”
On Happy’s Place, McEntire plays Bobbie, a woman who inherits half of a bar in Knoxville, Tennessee, that was founded by her late father, Happy. Linn plays Emmett, a shy cook at the bar who was a longtime friend of Happy’s.
In a 2024 interview with People, Linn described their personal and professional relationship, saying: “We’re running lines constantly. But every once in a while, I’ll sneak by for a quick kiss, just a peck on the cheek, and keep on moving. It’s fun.”
The Grammy-winning artist first met Linn in the 1990s. They later reconnected in January 2020 after appearing together on Young Sheldon, and began dating in June of that year.
“He was in Los Angeles, and I was in Oklahoma because my Mama had just died,” McEntire told People in 2022. “We didn’t get to see each other from March to June, but we’d talk over Zoom and FaceTime four to five times each day. We created a bond and an intimacy that was getting to know each other without being physical.”
McEntire will be Linn’s first marriage, while Linn will mark her third. She was first married to Charlie Battles from 1976 to 1987, and then to Narvel Blackstock from 1989 to 2015.
