Reba McEntire’s First Fans Recall Her Early Days

Reba McEntire has millions of fans all over the world, but her fan base started with a couple who live near Stringtown, Okla. They are Clark and Jackie McEntire, otherwise known as Reba's parents. Interviewed by the Oklahoman newspaper (with accompanying video of the conversation), the McEntires reminisce about their daughter's earliest performances, singing a solo of 'Away in a Manger' in first grade, and two years later performing at the Kiowa High School graduation ceremony, making quite an impression on an Oklahoma congressman.

"She sang 'He,' which is a pretty hard song to sing," Reba's mother Jackie recalls. "Carl Albert was the speaker at that graduation. When she got through singing and he got up to speak, he said 'I predict that this child will be as well or better known and famous as her daddy if she continues on.'"

Reba's dad, a three-time world-champion roper at the time, was indeed famous -- and a proud papa, recalling that Albert wrote Reba a letter after she did become famous. "He wrote word for word what he said at that graduation," Clark says.

Clark laughs today at the misconception people had of young Reba once she did start traveling as a working musician, believing she'd probably never been far from home.

"She'd been to more than 20 states before she ever went to singing," he notes, since at least a few times a year, Jackie and the children -- Alice, Pake, Reba and the youngest, Susie -- would travel to rodeos with their dad, pulling a horse trailer behind their Chevy sedan.

On one trip, the family stopped to get a look at Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park, only to encounter a bear which was getting its own look at Clark's roping horse. "His front paws were up on the trailer. The old horse didn't get excited about it," Clark recalls. And while the horse didn't seem too bothered, Jackie remembers, "The kids were wide-eyed and I was too!"

It seems appropriate that Reba, who's competing for two CMA awards next week, says the trait of hers that's most like her father's is her competitiveness. And while she believes she is most like her mother in that she is a good mother herself, Reba adds that she and Jackie have a similar temperament. "I guess it's the red hair," says Reba.