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Her performance so impressed Red Steagall, who was also performing at the event, that he invited her to Nashville to record demos for his music publishing company. Reba sang the National Anthem at the National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City on Dec. After high school ended, Reba went to college at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, later graduating in 1976 with a major in elementary education and a minor in music. Soon after, the three musical siblings formed their own group, The Singing McEntires, and performed frequently at rodeos, clubs, and dance halls.

Her older sister Alice, runner up to the IFR Barrel Racing Championship that same year, never sought a musical career, but was always a strong supporter of her family. While in high school, Reba joined her older brother Pake (who later had his own Country Music career) and younger sister Susie (who would grow up to become a Gospel singer) as members of the Kiowa High School Cowboy Band, and recorded a single, “The Ballad of John McEntire,” for Boss Records in 1971. Instead, she had four children and taught them how to sing and harmonize on the long car trips. Her mother, a former schoolteacher and secretary to the superintendent of Kiowa High School, had once harbored dreams of being a Country Music singer.

She would later follow in the family tradition by participating in barrel racing competitions from the time she was 11-years old until she was 21. Her father was the World Champion Steer Roper in 1957, 1958, and 1961, an honor her grandfather John McEntire also won in 1934.

The third of four children, she was raised on her family’s 8,000-acre family ranch in Chockie, Okla., and travelled frequently to watch her father compete at rodeos. On March 28, 1955, Reba Nell McEntire was born in McAlester, Okla., to Clark Vincent and Jacqueline Smith McEntire.

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