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Reba McEntire “Didn’t Play Cowgirl Growing Up,” She “Was One”

Reba McEntire cowgirl childhood

Reba McEntire wasn’t born into a family of country stars. Instead, she grew up on a farm in rural Oklahoma and helped her family raise cattle. Per Fox News, Reba recently told the Wall Street Journal that she and her three siblings worked hard on the family farm.

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“My family lived on an 8,000-acre ranch in Chockie, Oklahoma, where my father ran several thousand cattle a year,” she said.

“I began working on our ranch at age 5,” Reba recalled. “If Daddy needed a driver to move grain in his pickup truck, he came in and got whoever was there. “

Reba McEntire recalled her dad rigging the truck so she could drive. “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.”

Reba McEntire Was A Cowgirl Through And Through

She told the WSJ that not only did she work on the cattle farm, but she also followed in her dad’s footsteps and competed in rodeo barrel racing starting at age 11.

@reba

Barrel racing prepared me well for my career in the music business. Hear some of the lessons rodeo taught me over the years in my audiobook, NotThatFancy!

♬ original sound – Reba McEntire

She shared a clip from her audiobook on TikTok about her days barrel racing, “The kind of drive I learned on horseback set me up for building a career in music. 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.”

As we know, Reba eventually turned to music and never looked back. She’s had 24 No. 1 hits and won Grammys, CMA awards, and a Kennedy Center Award in 2018. Reba McEntire is an icon but stays humble and close to home.

She told the WSJ that she splits her time between Los Angeles and Nashville, and that’s her true “happy place.”

This story’s featured image is by Kathy Hutchins via Shutterstock.

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