Queen Reba McEntire and the great Kenny Rogers had the benefit of a longstanding friendship. They became close when Rogers asked McEntire to join him for the third installment of his The Gambler Western television film series, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw. McEntire even credits Rogers for saving her from an extremely rough patch in her life at the time. McEntire had lost seven members of her band and her tour manager in a 1991 plane crash.
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"I was still in a state of disbelief and not knowing what I'm gonna do moving forward after the plane crash," McEntire said. This is why it hurt Rogers when Vince Gill was chosen over him to sing "The Heart Won't Lie" with McEntire as a duet. Speaking with Apple Music's I Miss ... '90s Country Radio With Nick Hoffman, she revealed how she felt she'd mishandled the situation.
"'Heart Won't Lie' was a song we were trying to get a duet on with Kenny Rogers, and the keys just would not work," McEntire stated. "Then I took the song and did the duet with Vince. I didn't tell Kenny, which was my mistake, totally."
"The Heart Won't Lie" would become McEntire's 17th number-one single and Gill's third.
Reba McEntire Regrets Kenny Rogers Not Joining Her For A Classic Duet
As McEntire tells it, Rogers confronted her at the CMA Awards afterward. "Kenny approached me at the CMA Awards. He said, 'Why did you do that?' I said, 'Kenny, I am so sorry. We were just going so fast. It's a great, wonderful song. I never even considered coming back and talking to you about that, and that's one of the things I totally regret.'"
"I hugged his neck, and I told him I was terribly sorry. But I did not do that maliciously," McEntire concluded. Despite that bump in the road, McEntire and Rogers' friendship would strengthen over the years. In fact, they got to do a duet later in "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer."
Speaking with Taste of Country about Rogers, who passed in 2020 at the age of 81, McEntire said, "I miss him so much. He's such a special person and a big-hearted giver."
