Reba McEntire Says Her Wedding to Rex Linn Could Last ‘Three or Four Days’ — and Their Animals May Be Part of It

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire in Pasadena in July 2024.

Reba McEntire and Rex Linn are planning a wedding that sounds far from traditional — and if the country music legend gets her way, the celebration could stretch across several days and include horses, donkeys, longhorn cattle and plenty of dogs.

The 71-year-old country star recently shared new details about her upcoming wedding to Rex Linn, 69, explaining that their plans have grown well beyond the idea of a single-day ceremony.

During a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, McEntire joked that the event may need to become a multi-day celebration.

“It’s not going to be a wedding day — it’s going to have to be three or four days,” she said.

That extended timeline may be necessary because McEntire and Linn are imagining a highly personal celebration built around their life together, including the many animals that are part of their family.

The couple, who also work together on the NBC sitcom Happy’s Place, are considering holding the wedding on a farm or ranch surrounded by the animals they love.

McEntire explained that their extended animal family goes far beyond ordinary household pets.

“Well, see, not only do we have granddogs, we have long-horned steers, we have donkeys, we have horses, and dogs,” she said. “So it’s going to be a very unusual wedding on the farm.”

When the Entertainment Tonight reporter suggested that McEntire could even make her entrance on horseback, the singer immediately had a candidate in mind.

“Gator would love that,” she replied, explaining that Gator is her horse.

The possibility of McEntire riding into her wedding on horseback would certainly fit the relaxed, country-inspired atmosphere she and Linn appear to be envisioning.

But animals are not the only logistical challenge facing the couple.

Another major question is who will provide the music.

Considering McEntire’s decades-long career in country music and Linn’s extensive connections in the entertainment industry, the pair have no shortage of famous friends who could potentially perform.

According to McEntire, that abundance of possibilities has actually created a problem.

“Rex has his list, and I have my list, and if we leave anybody out we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings,” she explained.

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February 2026.

As a result, the couple still has not decided exactly how the musical portion of the wedding will work.

“So not sure how the music is going to roll,” McEntire said.

The uncertainty reflects a larger challenge surrounding the wedding: finding enough time to actually organize it.

Although McEntire and Linn are engaged and clearly enthusiastic about eventually getting married, their professional schedules have repeatedly complicated the process.

McEntire told Entertainment Tonight that whenever they begin discussing potential wedding plans, work seems to intervene.

“Every time we plan on something, he gets a job, or we get back into the third season [of Happy’s Place] and hoping for more,” she explained.

For McEntire, this is not the kind of wedding that can easily be organized around a single free weekend.

Because they are imagining something much larger — potentially lasting a week or two when preparation and celebrations are taken into account — coordinating their schedules has become difficult.

“And you can’t plan something that we think is going to be a week or two,” she said.

McEntire has already made clear, however, that when the wedding finally happens, she does not want it to feel overly formal.

In a December appearance on the 3rd Hour of Today, she described the celebration she and Linn envision as distinctly their own.

“A Reba/Rex wedding is going to be very different,” she said.

Instead of emphasizing elaborate traditions or rigid ceremony, McEntire said the couple wants something comfortable and entertaining.

“It’s going to be low-key, lots of fun, lots of people, lots of food,” she explained. “Our big motto is just have fun.”

That philosophy appears consistent with the couple’s relationship, which developed gradually after they had already known one another for decades.

McEntire and Linn first met in 1991, long before they became romantically involved.

For years, they remained acquaintances and friends as each pursued separate careers and personal lives.

Their relationship changed in 2020, when the two reconnected following the death of McEntire’s mother, Jacqueline McEntire.

During the period of isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the pair began communicating regularly and eventually became much closer.

By October 2020, McEntire publicly confirmed that she and Linn were dating during an episode of her podcast, Living & Learning.

At the time, she spoke enthusiastically about their connection, describing Linn as “very interesting, very funny [and] very smart.”

McEntire explained that one of the strengths of their relationship was their ability to simply talk to one another.

“It’s good to have a person to talk to, laugh with, get into subjects about what’s going on,” she said.

Their conversations also allowed them to connect over their respective histories, families and careers.

McEntire noted that Linn, an actor with a long television and film career, was deeply interested in her music, while she was equally invested in his acting work.

That mutual support eventually developed into a long-term relationship — and, four years later, an engagement.

Linn proposed to McEntire on Christmas Eve in 2024 while the couple was taking a winter walk around their Tennessee ranch.

McEntire later recalled the proposal in an October 2025 interview with PEOPLE, describing it as both unexpected and deeply romantic.

She said the proposal was a “total surprise.”

“I was thrilled to death,” she said of becoming engaged.

Despite their happiness, McEntire and Linn chose not to immediately make the engagement public.

For months, they quietly enjoyed the milestone without formally announcing it.

The news eventually emerged during the 2025 Emmy Awards on Sept. 14, when an E! News reporter referred to McEntire and Linn as fiancés while speaking to them on the red carpet.

PEOPLE subsequently confirmed that the couple had become engaged several months earlier.

A source said at the time that the engagement had happened some time before the public confirmation and that McEntire and Linn were extremely happy.

For McEntire, the relationship has also taken on particular significance because she has been married twice before.

Rex Linn and Reba McEntire at the Academy of Country Music Awards in Texas in May 2025.

Rather than comparing Linn directly with previous partners, she has repeatedly emphasized the distinctive emotional connection they share.

After their engagement became public, McEntire told PEOPLE that she had “never been loved by a man like Rex Linn.”

She also described her fiancé as someone whose tenderness has had a profound impact on her.

“Rex is a very tender-hearted man, and I just love him with all my heart,” she said. “He’s a good guy.”

Their personal relationship has increasingly overlapped with their professional lives as well.

McEntire and Linn currently appear together in Happy’s Place, meaning that the couple spends considerable time working side by side while simultaneously trying to organize their future wedding.

That demanding schedule helps explain why no definitive wedding date has yet been announced.

Still, McEntire’s latest comments make it clear that the couple is thinking seriously about what they want the celebration to look like.

Rather than a glamorous celebrity ceremony built around formality, the vision emerging from McEntire’s comments sounds intentionally personal: several days of festivities, abundant food, friends and family, music, ranch surroundings and possibly an entire collection of animals.

There may even be a horseback entrance involving Gator.

For now, McEntire and Linn appear content to allow their plans to evolve around their careers rather than forcing themselves into a strict timeline.

And when the wedding finally happens, McEntire has already established the guiding principle.

It should be unmistakably Reba and Rex — unconventional, relaxed, filled with the people and animals they love, and above all designed around one simple objective: having fun.