Before she was the Queen of Country, Reba McEntire was a young Oklahoma cowgirl who fell for a rodeo cowboy who seemed larger than life, and that love story would shape her career and her toughness forever.
In 1976, at just 21 years old, Reba married Charlie Battles, a steer-wrestling champion ten years her senior. Charlie was already divorced and raising two sons, Lance and Coty, when he swept Reba off her feet. To her, he was rugged, charming, and protective. To him, she was the bright-eyed ranch girl with a voice that could cut through any smoky honky-tonk. They tied the knot and settled into ranch life in Stringtown, Oklahoma, running cattle while Reba started chasing her dream in Nashville.
Reba was still a newcomer then. Her first single, “I Don’t Want to Be a One Night Stand,” barely scratched the Billboard charts, but she was grinding, juggling chores at home with the road miles of a rising country singer. She and Charlie worked cattle together, hauled trailers, and lived that roughneck rodeo life. By all accounts, she adored him and believed they were building a future side by side.
But success has a way of pulling people apart. Reba’s star started rising fast in the early 1980s. She signed with MCA, took control of her sound, and dropped My Kind of Country in 1984, the record that shot her into stardom. Meanwhile, Charlie wasn’t adjusting well to life in her shadow. Reba later admitted that what once felt like protectiveness turned into a domineering streak. His temper flared, he clashed with her band, and he made it clear he didn’t like her career being the center of attention.
In her autobiography Reba: My Story, she laid it out plain. Charlie could be controlling and quick to anger, and he even humiliated her in front of her band by calling her names. He didn’t hide his resentment of her success, and the marriage turned into a battle of its own. Reba was also left feeling like an outsider with his kids. She recalled one day when Charlie and the boys went to feed cattle, a chore she normally did with him, and he told her flat-out there wasn’t room for her in the truck. That cut deep, and it was one of many signs that things were unraveling.
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It all came to a head by 1987. Reba had grown tired of the fights, his jealousy, and his habit of dipping into her money without permission. She packed up, left Oklahoma behind, and filed for divorce. It was a painful split, but it turned into one of the defining moments of her life. Free from the marriage, she planted herself in Nashville and put everything she had into her music. From that moment on, there was no looking back.
Charlie Battles returned to ranch life and later remarried. His health declined after a stroke in 2006, and he passed away in 2013 at 68 years old. Reba went on to marry Narvel Blackstock in 1989, though that too ended in divorce in 2015. But her time with Battles left scars that made her stronger and shaped the way she handled every challenge afterward.
Looking back, Reba doesn’t deny that she loved Charlie, but she’s just as honest about how it fell apart. She once admitted she probably chose her career over her marriage, but it’s clear that choice made her who she is today. She walked through the fire of a bad marriage, came out tougher, and built a career that has stood for decades.
Charlie Battles may not be a name most folks remember, but he was part of the storm that forged Reba McEntire into a legend. And in true country fashion, she took the heartbreak, the grit, and the lessons, and turned them into fuel for a career that never slowed down.
