Reba McEntire's description of boyfriend Rex Linn on her phone is very funny

Reba McEntire opens up about her life, career, relationship with Rex Linn and more in her new lifestyle book/cookbook.

In “Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots,” released Oct. 10, McEntire also reflects on her faith and how her music connected her to God. She lists ways to communicate with God, one of which being to “sing a song.”

“Music and faith were joined together early on,” she tells TODAY.com, recalling how her grandmother taught her to sing “Jesus Loves Me” when she was a child.

“I can still see us sitting there," she says.

McEntire mentions in the book that she thanks God for reconnecting her with Linn, calling the reunion "one of the best surprises" God ever gave her.

The couple — nicknamed "Sugar Tot" and "Tater Tot," aka "The Tots" — first met in 1991 on the set of "The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw." They reconnected on the set of “Young Sheldon” in 2020.

“Rex texted me and said, ‘You’re coming to LA? Let’s have dinner,’” McEntire recalls. “I don't know what it was about it. ... I wanted to get in to see Rex so bad I could hardly stand it. We were inseparable.”

When the pandemic hit, McEntire says, she and Linn texted and called every day. He is saved as “Rex Linn, long-distance boyfriend” on her phone. “I haven’t changed it since 2020,” she says.

Linn, on the other hand, stuck to her famous nickname, and has McEntire saved as “Tater Tot.”

When it comes to picking her ideal date with Linn, she lists a few of her favorite "not-that-fancy" date ideas in the book, including an at-home dinner and a movie, a picnic in the park and more.

She tells TODAY.com that one of her favorite memories with Linn was a trip to Sonic on Valentine's Day, now a yearly tradition of theirs for the holiday.

"We just sit in the car and eat," she says.

When asked why she prefers a "not-that-fancy" date night, McEntire says they "get to do so many fancy things, and when it's not fancy it feels more like down-home and more personal."

In writing "Not That Fancy," McEntire says she told her team she would only do a recipe book if it included pictures.

"I have to have pictures if I'm going to cook anything, and they said OK," she says. "So we got to do pictures that some of the fans haven't seen and stories that I haven't told."

"I get very sentimental, I get very choked up, emotional," she says. "Because I kind of bared my soul in this book and told some stories I haven't told before."

McEntire also explains the significance of sharing stories about her mother, Jacqueline McEntire, who passed away in March 2020.

"With Mama's passing in 2020, I had a lot to talk about, and mainly her," she says.

The release of the book aligns with her first season as a coach on NBC's "The Voice" after serving as a mega mentor during Season 23 earlier this year.

“It was not fun at first for me because they had all been together before,” McEntire says of her fellow coaches, Gwen Stefani, John Legend and Niall Horan, adding, “It was already their club, and I was the new kid. And it was rough.”

“After a while they just embraced me and brought me in,” she says. “I felt like family."

McEntire praises the "great talent" she's seen on the show so far, and acknowledges how hard it is to share criticism to her team.

"I like the training, the coaching. I don't like to tell people what they did wrong," she says.

"I don't like negativity, so I always try to find something positive to tell them," she says.

McEntire shows a similar positive tone in "Not That Fancy," explaining how rereading the book while flying to New York to promote it was "very emotional" for her.

“So that means we did a good job by putting heart in it,” she shares. “Because if you don’t have heart in your music or what you’re reading, you’re not getting anything out of it.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com