Reba McEntire Took Control of Her Life After Her Divorce: ‘I Started Signing the Checks’
Divorce is always a marker of change for anyone who experiences it, and celebrities are no different. For country music megastar Reba McEntire, her 2015 divorce from Narvel Blackstock meant it was time for her to learn how things worked behind the scenes in her own life.
Blackstock and McEntire were married for 26 years, and he had been acting as her manager at the time. In addition to their personal and professional split, McEntire also lost her CEO and production manager around the same time. These losses all came shortly after the death of her father, leaving the superstar with a whole new — and unfamiliar — world to navigate on her own.
"Four men who were rock and pillars of my world were gone," McEntire says during an appearance on Apple Fitness+ Time to Walk.
The "I'm a Survivor" singer proved that a survivor is exactly what she is, as she faced the challenge head-on and began to learn how to take care of her own business.
"I started taking over signing the checks," she says matter-of-factly, "and then I started realizing how much water cost, and the electric bill, and all the things that was going on in my life."
"I made the money, I brought it home. So it was a huge change for me."
McEntire credits her brave spirit to her inclination to lean on her faith.
"Everything that I was dealing with privately, personally — I had to run 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,’" she recalls. "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."
McEntire released a new-old project — a triple album hits package called Revived Remixed Revisited — on Oct. 8. She has also just announced a new tour, which will finally launch in November after being delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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