Reba McEntire Breaks Silence on Her Ex-Husbands’ New Relationship

From Oklahoma Ranch Girl to a Woman Who Refused to Let Divorce Destroy Her Family

Long before Reba McEntire became a household name, she was a ranch girl from Oklahoma who learned early that success demanded discipline, patience, and hard work.

Born in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1955, Reba grew up in a family deeply connected to rodeo.

Her grandfather was a world champion steer roper, and her father later achieved the same distinction three times.

Life on the family ranch was practical rather than glamorous.

Reba and her siblings helped with cattle and chores, while their mother, Jacqueline, filled the household with music.

Those two influences—hard work and music—would shape nearly everything Reba became.

Her mother taught the children to harmonize during long car rides to rodeo events.

Reba began performing at school and eventually sang with her siblings at local events, bars, and dances.

She also played basketball, ran track, learned instruments, and even competed in barrel racing.

Music eventually pulled her toward Nashville.

In 1974, Reba was asked to sing the national anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City.

Country artist Red Steagall heard her performance and immediately recognized something distinctive in her voice.

His encouragement eventually helped send the young singer toward Nashville.

Reba initially hesitated.

A career in professional music was hardly guaranteed, and she had already built a comfortable connection to her family and Oklahoma roots.

Her mother persuaded her to keep going.

That decision changed her life.

Reba signed her first recording contract in the mid-1970s.

The early years were not easy.

Her first releases produced modest results, and she had to spend years touring and learning how to build an audience.

Eventually, however, she began fighting for greater control over the music she recorded.

She wanted traditional country rather than a softer pop-oriented sound.

That instinct proved crucial.

By the mid-1980s, Reba had become one of country music’s defining voices.

Awards followed.

Hit records followed.

A Grammy followed.

The ranch girl who once wondered whether Nashville was really where she belonged had become country music royalty.

But behind the career was a personal life that would experience extraordinary highs and devastating lows.

Reba married Charlie Battles in 1976, when she was still building her career.

Battles was a champion steer wrestler and rancher, and the marriage initially connected Reba to the Oklahoma lifestyle she had always known.

But her career began accelerating.

The demands of touring and the different directions their lives were taking eventually became impossible to ignore.

The marriage ended in 1987, just as Reba was entering a major new phase of her professional life.

Two years later, she married Narvel Blackstock.

Narvel had joined Reba’s band in 1980 and gradually became much more than a musician working behind her.

He became her manager, confidant, business partner, and eventually her husband.

They married in 1989 in a ceremony aboard a boat on Lake Tahoe.

For the next 26 years, their lives became deeply intertwined.

Together they welcomed their son, Shelby, while Reba also became a stepmother to Narvel’s children from a previous marriage.

Their family would eventually become even more connected to entertainment, with Narvel’s son Brandon marrying singer Kelly Clarkson.

The relationship between Reba and Narvel was unusual because marriage and business were almost impossible to separate.

He helped guide her career.

She relied on him for professional support.

They traveled together, worked together, raised a family together, and built an enormous entertainment career.

Reba later acknowledged that the arrangement could become complicated.

Even vacations could turn into conversations about business.

Yet for years, it appeared to work.

Then came 2015.

On August 3, Reba and Narvel announced that they were separating after 26 years of marriage and approximately 35 years of working together.

The divorce was eventually finalized that October.

The public announcement was painful enough.

But the story became considerably more complicated after Narvel moved into a new relationship.

His new partner was Laura Putty Stroud, a Nashville real estate agent who had reportedly been part of the wider circle surrounding Reba and Narvel.

That detail made the situation especially uncomfortable.

Stroud was not an anonymous stranger.

She had reportedly socialized with the couple and appeared in photographs with Reba during the years before the divorce.

She had been present around family and social events, including Shelby’s racing activities.

For Reba, that meant Narvel’s new relationship involved someone connected to the world they had shared for decades.

It would have been understandable for such a development to produce anger.

Instead, Reba largely refused to participate in the public drama.

She did not turn the situation into a feud.

She did not publicly attack Stroud.

She did not use interviews to settle scores with Narvel.

Her approach was remarkably controlled.

In fact, Reba had already admitted that she never wanted the divorce to happen.

Adjusting to life without Narvel was difficult, particularly because their relationship had been such a central part of her adult life.

But she also came to accept that sometimes a marriage reaches a point where two people cannot remain together simply because they have shared so much history.

That acceptance became the foundation of her response.

There was another important factor: family.

Divorce did not erase Shelby’s relationship with his father or his connection to the rest of the Blackstock family.

Reba continued to maintain relationships with Narvel’s children.

She understood something many divorced families struggle to accept: the end of a marriage does not have to mean the destruction of every relationship surrounding it.

That philosophy helped explain why she avoided turning Narvel’s new romance into a public war.

She could be hurt without being destructive.

She could be disappointed without humiliating anyone.

And she could move forward without pretending that 26 years of history had never happened.

That restraint was particularly striking because Reba had already endured experiences far more devastating than a divorce.

In 1991, tragedy struck when a plane carrying members of her touring band crashed shortly after takeoff in California.

Several members of her touring family died, along with the pilots.

For Reba, these were not distant colleagues.

They were people who had spent years traveling with her, performing beside her, and sharing the exhausting routine of life on the road.

The loss devastated her.

Yet only days later, she performed at the Academy Awards.

Later that year, she released For My Broken Heart, an album dedicated to those she had lost.

The record transformed grief into music and became one of the most successful releases of her career.

That experience revealed something essential about Reba.

She had learned how to carry enormous pain without allowing it to define her entire future.

The same quality appeared after her divorce.

Her relationship with Narvel had ended, but she did not need to destroy the past in order to move forward.

Eventually, Reba found another relationship with photographer and businessman Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo.

The relationship appeared to offer something very different from her marriage to Narvel: companionship without the same professional entanglement.

They traveled together and enjoyed a quieter chapter of life before ending their relationship in 2019.

Even then, Reba described their separation in respectful terms and indicated that they remained friends.

That pattern is revealing.

Throughout her life, Reba’s relationships have changed, but her approach to endings has remained remarkably consistent.

She rarely seems interested in turning private pain into public spectacle.

Her response to Narvel’s new relationship therefore becomes more meaningful when viewed against the entire arc of her life.

She was not simply a woman reacting to an ex-husband’s girlfriend.

She was a mother protecting family relationships.

A former wife accepting an unwanted ending.

A longtime business partner separating her personal history from her professional identity.

And a woman who had already learned that life can change without warning.

The temptation in a story like this is to search for the explosive quote—the devastating confession, the angry accusation, the moment when everything supposedly fell apart.

Reba offered something much less sensational and arguably much more powerful.

Silence.

Distance.

Acceptance.

She did not have to publicly celebrate Narvel’s new romance.

She did not have to pretend the situation was comfortable.

But she also refused to allow someone else’s choices to dictate her behavior.

That may be the real reason her response remains so compelling.

Reba McEntire spent decades learning how to command enormous stages.

She learned how to survive career setbacks, personal tragedy, heartbreak, and the extraordinary pressure of celebrity.

But perhaps one of her greatest achievements came away from the spotlight.

When a painful chapter of her life ended and another person began writing a new one without her, Reba chose not to burn the entire book.

She simply turned the page.

And after everything she had survived, she knew exactly how to keep moving forward.