In a new interview, country legend Reba McEntire reflects on her 2015 divorce. The music icon was married to Narvel Blackstock starting in 1989. No divorce is easy, and after so many years, it’s never an easy choice.
According to People, Reba McEntire spoke to Apple Fitness + about how she took major charge of her career following the split. She was in a particularly tough spot because her husband also happened to be her manager.
“Things started going south with my marriage. Narvel Blackstock, my manager and husband at the time — we got a divorce. The shocker of it all was, there were four people who were taking care of all my business,” she said. “I had my production manager who left, I had my CEO who left, my manager and husband, and my father had died. So four men who were rock and pillars of my world were gone.”
With all the people in her life gone who helped manage her music career, it was up to Reba McEntire to pick herself up and make her own path. Her father tragically passed away in 2014, just a year before they divorced. It was also the first time McEntire really lived on her own in a long while.
This also isn’t the first time McEntire has been through a divorce. She was married to Charlie Battles from 1976 through 1987.
“I started taking over signing the checks. And then I started realizing how much water cost, and the electric bill, and all the things that was going on in my life,” she noted. “I made the money, I brought it home. So it was a huge, huge change for me.”
Reba McEntire Got Through it With the Help of Faith, Friends
The difficult combination of the upending of her professional life and the upending of her personal life was incredibly awful to handle. Reba McEntire turned to her faith.
“Everything that I was dealing with privately, personally — I had to run it all 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.” And I would wait, and He would guide me,” she noted. And so without my faith, I have no idea where I would be or my career would be, at this time today.”
She also got by with a little help from her close friends. Reba McEntire ended the talk by advising anyone else in the situation to take care of themselves. She said those struggling should go to people that are close to them that they can really rely on.
“Go home, regroup, and listen to see what you’re supposed to do next,” she advised. “Rally friends around you. Good positive friends that have your best interests at heart — which I did — and you will survive.”
