Country isn’t just the music Reba McEntire sings, is how she’s lived her life since becoming a cowgirl at a young age.
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McEntire’s work as a cowgirl started on her family’s farm at the age of 5 and has earned her lots of respect from Country music fans across her career. Now, she’s introducing that side of her life to a new generation that is familiarizing themselves with the red-headed Country royalty that’s now in front of new audiences with her role of coach on NBC’s The Voice.
"My family lived on an 8,000-acre ranch in Chockie, Oklahoma, where my father ran several thousand cattle a year,” McEntire recently shared in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. ”I began working on our ranch at age 5. If Daddy needed a driver to move grain in his pickup truck, he came in and got whoever was there. I was so little that Daddy put a 50-pound feed sack on the driver’s seat before putting me on top of it. I’d be on my knees to work the steering wheel. He’d put the truck in granny gear, jump out and off I’d go."
She continued, "I didn’t play cowgirl growing up, I was one."
Her roles became more widespread as she got older and was also responsible for stepping up alongside her siblings when her father, who was a three-time world champion steer roper, would leave for competition. Her regular chores included gathering horses, saddling and loading them up in the trailer where she’d take them to steer cattle.
"We’d get them saddled and head back to eat,” she explained. “After, we’d hop in the truck, load the horses into a trailer and take them to help steer the cattle into the area where they would be weighed and sold. Then we’d go to school with Mama. She was the school secretary."
Between farm chores and school, McEntire still found time for extracurricular activities which included performing and also competing in rodeos as a barrel racer beginning at age 11 and lasting all the way through college. The now 69-year-old says her time in rodeo prepared her for her time in the music industry in many ways.
"The kind of drive I learned on horseback set me up for building a career in music,” she shared in a recent TikTok video. “In this industry, the key thing to do is just keep going and keep racing against yourself. There are a lot of talented, hard-working people in the world, but I'm convinced that it's the ones with an unshakable belief in themselves who end up succeeding most often."
It’s worked out well for McEntire who has seen widespread success not only with her music, but acting and TV appearances as well. Her most notable awards include a total of 24 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, three GRAMMYs, CMA honors and so much more.