It’s over. Reba McEntire and her boyfriend, Anthony “Skeeter” Lasuzzo, have called it quits.
Speaking to Us Weekly exclusively, the country singer confirmed the breakup when noting that they won’t be spending the holidays together. “Skeeter and I broke up in May, so, unfortunately, we will not be spending that time together,” McEntire, 64, told Us on Wednesday, October 30, when speaking about her new movie Spies in Disguise. “We still talk and we’re friends, but just decided to go our separate ways.”
The Reba alum and Lasuzzo, 69, first met in 2017 while on vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She was introduced to the retired oil geologist through their mutual friend, Brooks & Dunn singer Kix Brooks.
“Kix and Barbara Brooks thought it’d be a good idea, since we were gonna be up around Yellowstone, to get Kix’s best friend’s wife’s brother to show us around. He’s a photographer in Jackson Hole,” she explained to Taste of Country in 2018. “I made another trip to Jackson Hole, because I just love it up there, and he asked me out for a date — just the two of us. And we’ve been dating ever since.”
The “Consider Me Gone” singer also noted that the former couple got “along really well,” and enjoyed doing several activities together.
“We love the mountains. Everything that we have encountered … We love going to plays in New York,” she previously told the publication. “He was in the oil and gas business, so being from Oklahoma, I was very familiar with that. As a matter of fact, my very first job, other than singing, was checking records with an oil lease company! It’s so funny.”
McEntire’s romance with Lasuzzo came after she announced her separation from her ex-husband, Narvel Blackstock, in August 2015. She was married to Blackstock, now 63, for 26 years.
The exes confirmed their split in a joint statement through Big Machine Label Group, where they shared that they would “continue to support each other” and work together despite their marriage coming to a close.
Their divorce was finalized in October of that year.
Speaking with CMT in 2016, McEntire opened up about her separation with Blackstock. “Well, the divorce was not my idea,” she said at the time. “I didn’t want it in any shape, form or fashion. So it was really hard to make the adjustment when someone’s not happy.”
The Grammy winner added, “I just want everyone to be happy in their lives because our lives are too short to be miserable. I just thought it was the best thing to take my marbles and go play somewhere else, is what Daddy used to always say.”
McEntire and Blackstock share a son, 29-year-old race car driver Shelby Blackstock. Narvel’s son with ex-wife Elisa Gayle Ritter, Brandon, is married to Kelly Clarkson.
Closer was the first to break the news.
