Reba McEntire’s life reads like one of her own heartbreak ballads—raw, relentless, and impossible to look away from. Born on a cattle ranch in Chockie, Oklahoma, in 1955, she grew up roping calves and singing in the family quartet, the Singing McEntires. Her father, Clark, a three-time world champion steer roper, and mother, Jacqueline, a schoolteacher with a voice like honey, raised four kids on grit and gospel. Reba learned early: you fall, you get back up, you sing louder.

By 1974, she was a college sophomore at Southeastern Oklahoma State when Red Steagall caught her belting the national anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. Steagall, a country singer-songwriter, told her, “Kid, you’ve got something.” A demo tape later, she was signed to Mercury Records. Her debut single, “I Don’t Want to Be a One Night Stand,” flopped. So did the next few. Critics called her voice “too twangy.” Nashville yawned.

Then came 1984. PolyGram Records gave her one last shot. My Kind of Country dropped, and the lead single, “How Blue,” hit No. 1. Suddenly, the girl who’d been told to tone it down was the hottest act in town. She followed it with “Somebody Should Leave,” another chart-topper. Reba wasn’t just in the game—she was rewriting the rules.

But fame came with a body count.

On March 16, 1991, eight members of her band and her tour manager died when their private plane crashed into Otay Mountain near San Diego. Reba had stayed behind with her then-husband, Narvel Blackstock, because of a stomach bug. She got the call at 1:30 a.m. “I screamed so loud the neighbors heard me,” she later told People. The guilt was crushing. She’d booked the flight. She’d survived. They hadn’t.

For weeks, she couldn’t sing. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t face a stage. Then one night, she picked up her guitar and wrote “For My Broken Heart.” The song became the title track of her 1991 album, which sold over four million copies. Every note was a scar. Every lyric, a funeral.

Divorce hit harder. In 2015, after 26 years of marriage, Narvel filed for divorce. The split was brutal—messy business entanglements, shared management companies, and a prenup that left Reba walking away with less than she expected. Tabloids feasted. Reba didn’t. She bought a farm in Tennessee, adopted three rescue dogs, and got back to work. “I’m not a victim,” she told Southern Living. “I’m a survivor.”

Her faith never wavered. Raised in the Church of Christ, Reba leaned hard into scripture after the crash. She quoted Psalm 46:1—“God is our refuge and strength”—in interviews like a mantra. When asked if she ever doubted, she snapped, “Honey, I don’t have time for doubt. I’ve got bills and a band to feed.”

The hits kept coming. “Fancy” in 1990—a gritty tale of a mother selling her daughter into prostitution to escape poverty—became her signature anthem. Reba’s version turned a forgotten Bobbie Gentry track into a feminist war cry. She performed it at the 1991 CMA Awards in a red velvet gown that sparked a thousand think pieces. Critics called it “tacky.” Fans called it iconic. The song’s been covered by everyone from Trisha Yearwood to Post Malone.

She crossed over, too. In 2001, she starred in the Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun, earning raves. Then came her sitcom Reba, which ran six seasons on The WB and UPN. The show—a single mom juggling kids, exes, and chaos—mirrored her life so closely that co-star Melissa Peterman joked, “We’re not acting, we’re just following Reba around with cameras.”

But the losses kept piling up. In 2019, her mother, Jacqueline, died after a long battle with cancer. Reba was on tour in England when she got the news. She finished the show, flew home, and buried her mom beside her dad in Oklahoma. Two years later, she lost her stepfather. “Grief don’t take holidays,” she posted on Instagram, alongside a photo of her mother’s Bible.

At 70, Reba’s still touring. Her 2023 album Not That Fancy debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart. She’s got a residency at the Bakkt Theater in Las Vegas, a line of fried chicken at Walmart, and a podcast where she interviews everyone from Dolly Parton to Kelsea Ballerini. She’s dating Rex Linn, her Young Sheldon co-star, who calls her “Tater Tot” in interviews. Paparazzi caught them holding hands at the ACM Awards. Reba just laughed and said, “I’m old, not dead.”

Her net worth hovers around $95 million, but she still drives a pickup truck and shops at Tractor Supply. She’s got 22 No. 1 hits, 14 ACM Awards, and a Kennedy Center Honor. She’s been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry. Yet she’ll tell you the proudest moment of her life was when her son, Shelby, graduated college without a single scandal.

Reba’s not perfect. She’s admitted to Botox (“I’m in show business, not the witness protection program”). She’s feuded with other divas—rumors swirl about a cold war with Dolly Parton over a duet that never happened. She’s been accused of lip-syncing (she hasn’t). And yes, she once wore a dress made of fried chicken buckets to the CMAs. It was a joke. The internet lost its mind.

But that’s Reba. She’ll cry in your living room, then roast you on national TV. She’ll sing about cheating husbands, then marry a man who manages her career. She’ll bury her band, her marriage, and her mother—and still show up to work with a full face of makeup and a smile that could power Nashville.

She’s not just country royalty. She’s the blueprint. Every wide-eyed girl with a guitar and a broken heart looks at Reba and thinks, If she can do it, so can I. From the red dirt roads to the neon lights, Reba McEntire didn’t just survive the music business—she conquered it. And she did it without ever losing the twang.