Inside Reba’s Place on April 9, the country music icon with blazing red locks stood an arm’s length from fans in the front row.
“We have some new music we want to spring on y’all,” Reba McEntire said.
The excited crowd hooted and hollered. Some had driven all night for the chance to sit in the crowd of roughly 200 people. Some who lived in the same small town as the bar, Atoka, Oklahoma, dropped in to enter a lottery for a ticket to see the hometown queen. Other overflow guests received texts just moments before doors opened. The spontaneous additions grabbed standing-room-only spots on the second floor. Even more fans gathered outside on the nearby green space, listening through a simulcast. McEntire’s wait staff lined the bar to watch.
“Since we are doing a show ‘One Night in Atoka,’ why don’t we do a song that’s called ‘One Night in Tulsa’?” McEntire, 71, said.
As the violin cried and the piano pulsed, her mezzo-soprano cut through the opening line: “Well the thing about leaving / is that somebody stays / And the problem with goodbye / is it only goes one way.”
Fans drove all night to meet the Queen of Country Music
In late March, the restaurant announced free tickets to watch McEntire sing. More than 35,000 entries poured in from four eligible states: Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Kansas. A little over 100 lucky patrons were chosen.
Nine-year-old Mikayla Hoult and her father, Mike, drove more than 10 hours overnight from Illinois. They didn’t have tickets, yet were still hoping to meet the famous singer.
“Because we weren’t in any of the four states, I asked, ‘Hey, this is probably a really good chance, Mikayla, for you to finally meet Reba. Do you want to go?’ And she’s like, ‘Yes, I want to go.’ So we got here this morning.”
The risk paid off. When McEntire’s gray-blue bus pulled up behind the restaurant, Mikayla held a sign that read, “Hi Reba! Could you sign me and my sister’s fiddles, please?”
“She did not hesitate to sign,” Mike said.
“It was amazing to meet her,” Mikayla added.
Amy Shelby drove two hours from Tuttle, Oklahoma, pulling her daughter out of school for the chance to see the “Fancy” singer face-to-face.
“She just loves Reba and I knew this is something that she’d never forget,” Shelby said. They did not have tickets either, but happened to be at the right place, right time.
Both families entered the lottery to get tickets to the show drawn at 5 p.m.
The highway town of Atoka
Atoka sits about 50 miles northeast of the Texas-Oklahoma border. Up until McEntire put it on the map as a tourist destination with her restaurant, the small town of 3,000 was a place to pass through, not a place to visit. On a typical weekday, about 30,000 cars move along U.S. Highway 69. On holiday weekends, that number can climb to 80,000.
For years, drivers kept going. Now, a towering blue sign reading “Reba’s Place” rises above the road, backed by billboards stretching in both directions. With only capacity to serve and seat 200, on some weekends a little luck and a prayer is the only way to get through the door.
“I’ve been on Highway 69 all my life, so coming back home is a lot of good memories,” McEntire said. “I was born and raised right here on 69 Highway from McAlester, went to school at Kiowa, lived at Chockie on land at Limestone Gap, and then to live in Stringtown, have the restaurant here in Atoka, and then I went to college at Durant.”
She opened the restaurant in 2022, converting a restored century-old Masonic Temple.
“This restaurant is three years and four months old,” McEntire said from the stage. “It’s been rough. A learning experience for me.”
She pointed to the details that make the space hers, from the antique bar to four antique Coliseum seats displayed along the brick wall. Her albums, photos and magazine covers line the walls. She also mentioned that the banana pudding and strawberry cake are her favorite desserts, crediting Chef Kurtess Mortensen and his team.
“Thank God for Chef Kurtess,” she said. “It takes a strong leader like that to make something this successful.”
So how many tourists come a year? The only estimate from Johnson was hundreds of thousands of visitors. Across the street at the Atoka Cola Soda Shop, store owner Cory Richards said he had a pinboard map where visitors would mark where they came from. Over two years, every state filled in. He added international flags each time a non-American visited, totaling 53.
“We all know God made the moon, but Reba hung it,” Richards said.
He grew up knowing McEntire’s family. He remembers the work ethic and the sense of humor passed down from her parents before they died. Richards loves to tell the story about McEntire signing cassettes in 1977 at the local Walmart right after she made her first record. He recalled the time that McEntire’s mom, Jackie, asked him to help fill up farm ponds with water for the cattle. McEntire’s dad, Clark, delivered one of Richards’ favorite jokes: “Our wells are so dry the fish have lice.”
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