Reba McEntire is opening up about her four-year relationship with Rex Linn. The couple, longtime friends who began dating in early 2020, are still going strong, with McEntire admitting she’s never, ever felt the way she feels about Linn.

“It was new,” McEntire said on The Drew Barrymore Show. “Greatest thing ever. It was just like, ‘Why now?’ So I asked Rex. I’ve been married twice. He’s been engaged four times, but never married. And so, I said, ‘Rex, how come you and I have known each other all this time, but we never got together?’ And he said, ‘Probably because you would have killed me.’ He’s a wild man. He’s a 12-year-old.”

McEntire previously said that she would consider marrying again, but that ultimately the decision was up to Linn.

“I told him if he wanted to get married that’s up to him totally,” McEntire told Taste of Country. “He doesn’t seem pressured one way or the other. We get along so well. We have fun. We travel together. Now, if you can do a road trip with a person and not get in an argument and still like each other when you get to your destination, that’s a pretty good partnership right there.”

McEntire and Linn met while both appearing in Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler movie in 1991, although they have far more in common than their successful acting careers.

“We grew up in Oklahoma,” McEntire explained. “He started in Texas, I don’t hold that against him, but we love all the same things and we’re close in age, so when I say, ‘Oh, you remember Bewitched back when we were kids?’ He’ll say, ‘Oh, I had a crush on Elizabeth Montgomery.’ We can talk about things. It’s a lot of fun.”

It was Linn who convinced McEntire to sing the national anthem at the recent Super Bowl, which occurred 50 years after she was discovered while singing the same song at a rodeo event.

“He said that they wanted me to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and I said ‘Oh my gosh. Well, let me think about that,’” McEntire told CBS News. “And Rex Linn, my boyfriend, who is a huge football fan, he said, ‘Yes, she’ll do it. Absolutely.’ So that’s where we’re at.”

McEntire is juggling time at home with Linn and on the TV show, The Voice, where she is currently serving as a coach for her second season in a row.

“It is a different part of me coming out because it’s non-scripted,” McEntire told Everything Nash and other outlets during a recent virtual media event. “It is. You just go have fun, which I like to do that … And they come up with some of the funniest skits for us to get to do. So it just brought out my personality that a lot of people haven’t seen. If you see a concert, you’ll see a little bit of it. It’s just me being a me.”