Reba McEntire is engaged to her Happy’s Place costar Rex Linn after 5 years of dating

The couple confirmed the news while walking the red carpet at the 2025 Emmys.

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire at the 2025 Emmys. Credit:Amy Sussman/Getty

Country music superstar Reba McEntire and actor Rex Linn are engaged after five years of dating.

The couple, who first met in the early 1990s and reconnected decades later, revealed their impending nuptials during an interview with E! News on the red carpet for the 2025 Emmy Awards, with correspondent Zuri Hall introducing Rex, 68, as as the fiancé of McEntire, 70.

A representative for McEntire confirmed the happy news to Entertainment Weekly and declined to comment further.

McEntire, who appeared at the 77th annual Emmys to perform a special tribute to The Golden Girls, met Linn while making the 1991 movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw. They began dating in 2020, with the two reconnecting after the death of McEntire’s mother and spending the COVID-19 pandemic together.

“When Mama got sick, he called me,” the actress and country singer told Today in 2021. “We’d gotten to see each other before because we’re both on Young Sheldon. So starting in March of 2020, we just kept talking and visiting and finally got together, see each other in June. We’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since.”

Indeed, Linn costars on McEntire’s latest sitcom, Happy’s Place, about a woman (McEntire) who inherits her late father’s restaurant. Linn plays Emmett, the restaurant’s long-term cook. The series also marks a reunion between McEntire and her Reba castmate Melissa Peterman, who plays her surprise half-sister.

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire on ‘Happy’s Place’.Casey Durkin/NBC via Getty

Speaking to PEOPLE last year about working with McEntire, Linn said, “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.”

“I do that with her too,” quipped Peterman, though she admittedly does not get the “same reaction.”

McEntire was previously married to music manager Narvel Blackstock from 1989 to 2015 and cattle rancher Charlie Battles from 1976 to 1987.