No stuffy formalities here: Reba McEntire says her wedding to Rex Linn will be fun, relaxed and uniquely them.

“It’s gonna be a non-traditional wedding because that’s Rex and me,” McEntire explained during an interview with E! News.

The country legend says she and her fiancé aren’t rushing their engagement, especially since she’s busy with projects including her NBC sitcom Happy’s Place and a return to coaching on The Voice.

But McEntire already knows there are a few basic staples that will be important at her wedding.

“We like comfort, we love friends, we love food,” she continues.

When Did Reba McEntire + Rex Linn Get Engaged?

McEntire and Linn confirmed they were engaged in September of 2025, after the news slipped out on the red carpet at the 2025 Emmy Awards.

But it turns out, they had already been engaged for several months by the time the rest of the world found out. She later admitted that Linn popped the question on Christmas Eve of 2024.

The couple didn’t plan on keeping their happy news a secret so long.

“We were gonna make the announcement when we got back to L.A. in January,” she told People. “And the [California wildfires] happened, and it wasn’t appropriate.”

“Our joy was like…oh my gosh, these people are losing their homes — they’re taken out of their homes,” McEntire continued. “We had to evacuate twice, so that wasn’t the time. And the time never presented itself until the Emmys, when it just happened.”

How Did Rex Linn Propose to Reba McEntire?

In another interview with USA Today, McEntire revealed that her engagement’s been in the works for even longer than since last Christmas.

She said Linn picked out the ring — a rose gold piece surrounded by black diamonds — in the first half of 2024 and carried it with him during an African safari the couple took together in June of that year.

But ultimately, he decided that trip wasn’t the right time to propose.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, Linn popped the question during a walk on the couple’s 130-acre ranch outside Nashville, near a creek.

It was a surprise to McEntire.

“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Would you marry me? I want to cross the finish line with you,’” she remembers.

She hugged his head, she says, but didn’t answer him right away.

“He said, ‘You’re not saying anything!’ And I finally said, ‘Well, yes! Yes!’ He thought he was going to have to jump in the creek,” McEntire jokes.

Linn said that it took “about 21 seconds” for McEntire to respond to his question, and “even a five-second pause feels like an hour.”

How Did Reba McEntire + Rex Linn Meet?

McEntire and Linn first met on the set of the 1991 film The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw.

They were friends, and reconnected in 2020, after McEntire had divorced her husband, Narvel Blackstock.

They began chatting over Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. They fondly named their routine “coffee camp,” a tradition they still carry on to this day.

The couple are currently working together on the set of Happy’s Place, where Linn plays the character of Emmett, the short-order cook at the bar owned by McEntire’s character, Bobbie.

Their onscreen characters have gotten flirty, too, hinting that a romance might develop on the new season of the show.