Reba McEntire became a cowgirl on her family’s ranch at age 5 before becoming a country music star.

Reba McEntire She worked hard on the family ranch from an early age before quickly becoming a country music star.

In a new interview with the magazine Wall Street Journal, The 69-year-old Voice coach recalled her rural upbringing and how everyone in her family helped with the day-to-day running of her father’s livestock business.

“I didn’t play cowgirl growing up,” McIntyre said. “I was one of them.”

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She continued, “My family lived on an 8,000-acre ranch in Cholkee, Oklahoma, where my father ran several thousand head of cattle a year.”

“I started working on our ranch when I was 5 years old.” “Unusual” hitmaker reminded. “If Dad needed a driver to haul grain in his pickup truck, he would come and find someone who was there.”

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“I was so small that my dad put a 50-pound bag of feed on the driver’s seat before he put me in it. I knelt down to work the steering wheel. I would go and leave.”

McIntyre was born in March 1955 to Clark and Jackie McIntyre, who also had daughters Alice and Susie and a son, Pake.

She recalled that her family lived on a ranch in a small gray house with one bathroom. “With the girls—Alice, Susie, Mom and me—we were all there at the same time and there was never a problem,” McIntyre said of sharing the bathroom.

“We loved each other’s company,” she added.

McIntyre explained that she was very close to her siblings while they were growing up in a small community in the hills southeastern Oklahoma.

“There were no kids around to play with, so we just had each other,” she said.

McIntyre recalls that she and her siblings teamed up to run the ranch while Clark, who was a three-time world champion steerer, competed in rodeo competition.

“Dad rodeoed from June to September,” she recalled. “It fell to us children to manage this big ranch while he was gone. We also had a hired man, Louis Sandman, and a grandfather, John McIntyre, who was a champion steerer himself.”

The singer told WSJ that she and her siblings would help with chores at the ranch in the morning before school.

“In the fall when I was a teenager, Pake and I would round up the horses on the 40-acre property while Dad cooked breakfast,” McIntyre recalled.

She continued: “We saddled them up and headed back to eat. We would then get in the truck, load the horses onto the trailer, and take them to help guide the cattle to the area where they would be weighed and sold. . Then we went to school with my mother. She was the school secretary.”

In addition to her duties at the ranch and attending school, McIntyre said she participated in other activities, including basketball and track, and played guitar and piano. However, singing was her passion.

“I always wanted to be on stage,” McIntyre said. “I was the third of four children, so I was almost invisible. I needed something to get attention, and that was singing.”

“The performance delighted my mother,” she added. “I really wanted to hear her say, ‘That was really good, Reba.’

Jackie also dreamed of becoming country singer and supported McEntire and her siblings in their musical aspirations.

The Grammy Award winner recalls that she formed a group with Paik and Susie called the Singing McEntires, and they performed together from junior high through high school.

“She was our best friend, our cheerleader and our disciplinarian,” McIntyre said of her mother, who died at age 93 in 2020 after a battle with cancer.

“And she was our rock,” McIntyre added. “Country music meant a lot to her.”

Meanwhile, McIntyre recalled that Clark was a distant father and rarely showed affection to his children, noting that Jackie “picked up the slack.”

“He wasn’t a good hugger and he wasn’t very good at expressing his love,” she said of Clark. “It was out of character for him.”

Speaking to WSJ, McIntyre recalled the first time Clark told her he loved her.

“Dad finally told me this in his hospital room after triple bypass surgery in 1987. When I said it was time for me to go, he said, ‘Okay, I love you,'” McIntyre said.

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Singer told the publication that her family was stunned by Clark’s words.

“We all looked at each other,” McIntyre said. “We believed he was still on surgical medications.”

Clark died in 2014 at the age of 86 after a long illness caused by a stroke.

McIntyre was more than just a ranch cowgirl. She also followed in the footsteps of her father and grandfather and began competing. at the rodeo as a barrel racer at the age of 11.

In an excerpt from her audiobook “Not That Fancy” that McEntire shared on TikTok, the singer recalls being “nervous as ever” during her first rodeo competition.

She noted that her father and grandfather, as well as Pake and Alice, who also competed in the rodeo, “all set the bar high for what us McIntyres could do in the arena. And I felt a lot of pressure to make them proud. “

Although McEntire didn’t win her first rodeo, she continued to compete in barrel racing for another decade, including while attending college in southeastern Oklahoma, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

In her TikTok video, McEntire explained that barrel racing helped prepare her for her music career. Although McIntyre later won ribbons and championships, she noted that she had to work harder than her siblings to succeed in the sport as she was not a natural.

“One day my dad asked me: “Reba, why do you always want to do what you can’t do?” McIntyre recalls. “Of course he wanted me to focus on singing.”

She continued: “That drive I learned on horseback helped me build a career in music. In this industry, the main thing is to just keep going and keep competing with yourself. There are many talented, hardworking people. working people in the world, but I am convinced that those who most often succeed are those who have unshakable faith in themselves.”

“Or maybe they’re the ones who are too stubborn to know when it’s time to walk away,” McIntyre added with a laugh.

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The singer told WSJ that she originally majored in music at southeastern Oklahoma State but found that “it was beyond me.”

“I switched to an education major and music became my minor,” she recalls. “Teaching was my backup plan.”

However, McEntire’s first big break came during her sophomore year of college in 1974, when she was hired to sing National anthem at the National Rodeo in Oklahoma City.

Country artist Red Steagall was in attendance and watched McEntire perform. She told the WSJ that a chance meeting with Steagall after the rodeo led her to move to Nashville.

“After the rodeo we all went to the Hilton,” she said. “There was a group of cowboys playing guitar. One sang and played the guitar and then passed it on to the next guy.”

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McIntyre recalled that she, Pake and Susie then “sang some harmony.”

“That’s where we saw Red again,” she recalls.

McEntire explained that Jackie approached Steagall about helping her children launch country music careers.

“Mom wasn’t shy. She said, “Red, can you take Pake, Reba and Susie to Nashville?” He said, “Jackie, I’m doing everything I can to stay afloat, but I’ll take Reba to make a demo tape and see what happens.”

“The next year, 1975, I was in a studio in Nashville. I wasn’t nervous at all. To be honest, I didn’t even know if I wanted to do this,” she recalled. “To achieve success as a singer would mean leaving your family behind.”

“Glenn Keener from PolyGram listened to the recording and brought two reels of mine and another girl’s to the label’s headquarters in Chicago. It could have been her, but they chose me and here I am.”

After this, McIntyre signed a contract with Polygram/Mercury Records. She and Steagall later worked together on the 2007 hit “Here We Go Again.”

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During an interview with WSJ, McEntire detailed how she found out she had reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country chart for the first time.

“In 1983, after my tour bus broke down, I called my manager Don Williams to tell him about it. He said my single “Can’t Even Get the Blues” had just hit number one on the charts. “, she said.

McIntyre continued: “I hung up and called my mom. She said, “Well, you finally did it.” I said, “No, ma’am. We did it.” I still cry just thinking about that call.”

The singer currently has 24 hits at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. McIntyre got three Grammy AwardsShe has been named CMA Female Vocalist of the Year four times and received the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors for her contributions to American culture.

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She made her acting debut in 1989, starring alongside Kevin Bacon in the horror comedy Tremors. McEntire starred in her television sitcom Reba for six seasons from 2001 to 2007, receiving a Golden Globe nomination in 2004.

In 2023, McIntyre replaced Blake Shelton as a coach on the reality show competition “The Voice”.

The singer also stars in the new NBC sitcom Happy Place, reuniting with her former Reba co-star Melissa Peterman. The series also stars McIntyre’s boyfriend Rex Lynn.

In her interview with WSJ, McIntyre said that she and Lynn split their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Nashville. The country queen also stayed true to her roots, telling the publication that she and Lynne own a ranch/farm about 20 minutes outside of Nashville.

“He’s on a new sitcom, but this is our happy place,” she said.

Original article source: Reba McEntire became a cowgirl on her family’s ranch at age 5 before becoming a country music star.