Reba McEntire is not afraid to touch on people’s emotions in her music. The Country Music Hall of Fame member is known for releasing emotional songs throughout her 50-year career, including “Whoever’s In New England”, “Does He Love You”, “Seven Minutes In Heaven”, and more.

But perhaps the most heartbreaking song Reba McEntire has ever released is “The Greatest Man I Never Knew.” Out in 1992 on her For My Broken Heart album, the song will break anyone’s heart with just one listen.

“The Greatest Man I Never Knew” begins with “The greatest man I never knew / Lived just down the hall / And every day we said ‘hello’ / But never touched at all / He was in his paper / I was in my room / How was I to know he thought I hung the moon?” The entire song, written by Richard Leigh and Layng Martine Jr., is about someone who tried, unsuccessfully, to feel the love of their father. Even more heartbreaking, the song is based on a true story, although the details differ.

Leigh’s parents were tragically killed when he was two years old, so he never really got to know them. Still, their absence in his life inspired him to write the tear-jerker song.

The Story Behind The Reba McEntire Song “The Greatest Man I Never Knew”

According to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, which Leigh was inducted into in 1994, he was fostered by various people after his parents’ death, until the ex-wife of his much older brother took him in when he was eight years old. When he was 15, she remarried, with the couple legally adopting Leigh.

Ironically, his adoptive mother was not a fan of his songwriting aspirations, at least at first.

“Please go to college, because no woman is going to want to live with a guy who sits around on the couch and plays guitar all day and doesn’t make any money,” he recalls her saying. Leigh did try various majors in college, but ultimately decided to pursue songwriting after relocating to Nashville.

“I thought, naively, that all singers wrote their own songs,” he says. “I got down there and found they needed songs because singers didn’t always write them. Turned out I was pretty good at making them up — better at that than singing.”

It’s fitting that Reba McEntire includes “The Greatest Man I Never Knew” on For My Broken Heart. The record is the first one McEntire released after seven members of her band, plus her manager, were tragically killed in a plane crash.