Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock were married for several decades before calling it quits, but there was a red flag predicting their downfall years earlier. For much of her career in country music, Blackstock served as her manager — an arrangement that’s destroyed relationships for countless celebrity pairings, including, but not limited to, Ike and Tina Turner, Sonny and Cher, and even McEntire’s own former daughter-in-law, Kelly Clarkson, whose divorce from Narvel’s son, Brandon Blackstock kicked off a nasty legal battle regarding commissions Brandon claimed Clarkson had cheated him out of receiving.
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McEntire’s post-divorce relationship with Narvel wasn’t as volatile, but she still had to hand over tens of millions of dollars to her second ex-husband when their divorce was finalized. Literally, McEntire lost a fortune after her divorce to the tune of $47 million. Unfortunately, most of their romance revolved around dollars and cents, as business was often at the center of their romance. “A situation that was always business” was how she categorized their partnership while speaking with Drew Barrymore. “We started out working together in the band,” she explained. “He was part of the band and then became my manager, later on then my husband, but it was a situation that was always business — whether we were getting ready in the morning, pillow talk, whatever, but it was business.”
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Nicki Swift reached out to Susan Winter, Relationship Expert and Bestselling Author of: Breakup Triage; The Cure for Heartache, who broke down how mixing business and pleasure impacts relationships, especially for celebrity couples.
Did business ruin Reba and Narvel’s marriage?
While Relationship Expert Susan Winter believes that “couples with a joint purpose do better in the long run,” business-centric celebrity couples face added challenges that make it hard for them to thrive. “Their relationships experience tremendous outside pressure from media, fans, and industry expectations. If the two careers are not moving in tandem, you’ve got fuel for competition and power plays,” Winter shared in her comments to Nicki Swift. That said, “structurally,” Reba McEntire’s and Narvel Blackstock’s business roles “should have worked” because they were complementary, non-competing roles (she was the talent while he was the manager). “This indicates the issues were internal,” added Winter.
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With that said, Winter doesn’t believe that couples should never work together. “No, I don’t think celebrity couples should automatically avoid working together,” she said. “That blanket advice assumes the issue is the business rather than how the relationship is structured. It’s a question of how the couple manages power, identity, and emotional boundaries.” She continued, “Business and love can mix beautifully when the couple shares values, vision, and respect. In fact, building something together can deepen the connection.”
In the case of McEntire and Blackstock, however, Winter believes that “business overtook the emotional partnership.” She added, “The issue wasn’t mixing business and love. It was failing to protect the love from being consumed by the business.”
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