Reba McEntire Corrects Savannah Guthrie on Today over Question About ‘Husband’ Rex Linn: ‘Now, Wait a Minute’

Reba McEntire wants fans to know she hasn’t tied the knot — at least, not yet.

The 70-year-old country icon appeared on the Today show on Monday, Dec. 1 to chat about her many projects, including season 2 of her sitcom Happy’s Place, where she stars alongside her real-life fiancé, Rex Linn.

During the conversation, co-anchor Savannah Guthrie remarked, “You also met your husband there. So Rex, good ole Rex…”

McEntire immediately jumped in to gently correct her. “Now, wait a minute. Before everybody has a conniption fit at home, we’re just engaged,” she said.

Guthrie, 53, apologized for the slip, and McEntire joked that the clarification was necessary for more than one reason. “My family will go, ‘Wait, you didn’t tell us?!’ ” she said with a laugh.

Linn, 69, was in the studio for the appearance, and when the camera cut to him, he initially looked a bit puzzled by the mix-up before smiling as his bride-to-be talked about their relationship.

McEntire went on to say that working with her fiancé is a joy.

“He is a workaholic, and he loves to rehearse,” the Voice coach shared. “Me, not so much on the rehearsal part, so he really makes sure that I know my lines, that I’m ready to go when we have a tape day. We have a blast. We’re so grateful and thankful that we get to go to work together, work together, and then go home together.”

She added that filming season 2 of the NBC comedy has been even more enjoyable than the first.

“Season 2’s so much fun!” she said. “You know in season 1 you kind of get the meshing together and learning each other’s habits and how they want to work. And it was fun. Season 2 is so much more fun now we know each other.”

Later, on the 3rd Hour of Today, McEntire confirmed that she and Linn got engaged in December 2024. “Almost a year in December,” she said of their engagement.

“A lot of people did not know,” she continued. “And when he asked me to marry him, it was Christmas Eve a year ago. So we were gonna announce it when we got back to L.A., but the fires happened. And there was not room for our joy in [the] devastating situation that everybody else was in.”

She explained that they chose to hold off on sharing the news publicly. But when a reporter referred to Linn as her “fiancé” at the Emmys, she decided to just go with it. McEntire admitted she “didn’t correct her” because it “sounded good to me.”

When it comes to their upcoming nuptials, the country star says fans shouldn’t expect a grand, ultra-formal affair. “A Reba, Rex wedding is going to be very different,” she said. “It’s going to be low-key, lots of fun, lots of people, lots of food. Our big motto is just have fun.”

Their engagement became publicly known in September, about five years into their romance, when it was confirmed that Linn had proposed a few months earlier and that the pair were overjoyed.

Though they’ve known each other since the 1990s, McEntire and Linn didn’t truly reconnect until 2020, following the death of McEntire’s mother.

“In 2020, when Mama got sick, he called me,” McEntire recalled on Today back in October 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.”

“And we’ve been pretty much inseparable ever since,” she added.