IN LIVING COLOUR
BE Magazine first met Susie McEntire at Cowboy Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during Frontier Days. The town has no shortage of traditional churches, but we were told that during rodeo, Cowboy Church is where people go.
Before we saw Susie, we heard her. Her voice came over the loudspeaker as people were finding their seats. “Don’t be shy,” she called out. “There are seats up front. Come sit up front. You can sit in the shade. Just come close to us.”
We did a double take. There is something unmistakably McEntire in Susie’s voice, a warmth and cadence so reminiscent of her older sister Reba that, for a second, we wondered who we were hearing.
But it was what Susie herself was saying that caught our attention: “Come closer.”
We would come to realize how very Susie that invitation was. She wants to know your name. She wants to hear your story. Her husband, Mark Eaton, is the jokester, quick with a line and usually ready to make you laugh. Susie draws you in. Together, they are warm, funny and easy to be around.
Music has been part of Susie McEntire’s life almost from the beginning. Raised on an Oklahoma ranch, she grew up singing with her siblings, toured with Reba as her sister’s career began to take off, and eventually built a career of her own in Christian country music.
Over the decades, she has recorded 20 albums, scored four number-one singles on the Positive Country radio charts, received numerous awards and nominations, and been named Artist of the Year several times in Positive Country Music. She is also a member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
Susie and Mark travel and minister together. She shares her faith through music and makes time for the people she meets along the way, listening to their stories, praying with them, and watching cowboys and cowgirls make decisions for Christ. Her own road has included extraordinary opportunities, disappointments, a difficult first marriage that ended in divorce and seasons when she had no idea what was coming next.
GROWING UP McENTIRE
Susie was the youngest of four children born to Clark and Jacqueline McEntire. Long before the McEntire name meant anything outside Oklahoma, they were a hardworking ranch family without much money. Their home didn’t have running water. Her mother would hang a quilt to divide the rooms, only to watch it blow sideways because the house was so drafty.
Her father was a successful rodeo cowboy who won three championships and was often away competing, while her mother kept things going at home. One piece of those early years remains with Susie quite literally: the large rocking chair where Jacqueline somehow managed to gather all four children. “I still have the large rocker mama perched us all on in order to read to us and rock me, the baby, to sleep,” she says. “Pake on one arm of the chair, Alice on the other, Reba beside mama and me in her lap.”
Being the youngest wasn’t always easy. Susie started first grade without knowing her ABCs, and by grade three she was so convinced she couldn’t learn the multiplication tables that she would pretend to be sick. “I began to hide,” she says.
She also became accustomed to going along rather than speaking up, learning to “conform, not have an opinion, let others speak for me, and just go for the ride.”
But another influence was taking root: Grandma Smith.
GRANDMA SMITH
“Her house was a haven to me,” Susie says. Grandma Smith gardened, tended peach and cherry trees, milked a cow, kept chickens, made her own butter and fed plenty of people from what Susie calls “the smallest kitchen in the world.”
What Susie saw at bedtime made an even deeper impression. Before Grandma Smith climbed into bed, she knelt on the floor and prayed for her children and grandchildren. No one had to tell Susie that her grandmother believed what she professed. She could see it. Because of Grandma Smith’s influence, Susie gave her heart to Christ at 12.
More than five decades later, Susie has grandchildren of her own. “I want to be the grandma my grandchildren can look up to,” she says.
FINDING HER OWN SONG
The McEntire children grew up singing. Susie, Reba and their brother Pake performed at clubs, civic events and community gatherings, and eventually, Susie joined Reba on the road. She had a front-row seat to her older sister’s rise to success. There were television appearances, award shows, tour buses and nice hotels, but the lesson Susie carried with her was decidedly less glamorous: “Arrive early, work hard. Always show up and do your best. Be friendly.”
When Susie became pregnant with her first child, the diesel fumes from the tour bus made her sick and she left the road. Reba’s career continued its extraordinary climb, and Susie was proud of her. The comparisons, however, were inevitable. People would arrive at Susie’s concerts and ask, “Is Reba gonna be here?” One article announced, “She’s no Reba.” Susie’s reaction: “Really? I wasn’t trying to be.”
She admits the comparisons got to her until a friend challenged the way she was looking at Reba’s success: “Do you think God made Reba just for Reba? Do you see where He has put you in this world?”
Susie sees it differently now. “Reba has done more for my career than she could ever imagine,” she says. “Just having a great reputation is enough to speak for me.”
A PLACE TO SING
By 1984, Susie was working in Reba’s office while raising a child. Singing had largely been put aside. Then one Sunday morning, she and her then-husband attended a different church. During the service, Susie felt called to devote her singing to God. The pastor told her, “You’ll never lack for a place to sing.” She took those words as confirmation that if God was asking her to use her voice this way, He would give her somewhere to use it.
And He did! Susie began performing Christian music and appearing at services held around the rodeo circuits. Her career took her across the country and produced a catalogue spanning country gospel, hymns and songs about faith, family and everyday life. She has sung with Reba, worked with some of Nashville’s finest musicians and songwriters and built an audience of her own. Among the hits in that catalogue: God’s Kept Me All These Years. Knowing what she lived through during those years gives the title particular weight.
HIS DAUGHTER
During Susie’s early days on stage, there were times when the difference between her public and private life was especially stark.
“I felt the anointing of the Lord so many times even in the midst of knock-down, drag-outs in the car going to the concerts,” she remembers, “being upset and then walking on stage and acting as if nothing was wrong.”
Susie’s first marriage included what she describes as physical, verbal and spiritual abuse. She and her husband sought counselling, attended retreats, separated and reconciled, and at one point genuinely believed their marriage had been restored. They shared that testimony publicly and later wrote about their experience together. When the abuse continued, Susie was equally candid. After acknowledging publicly that abuse was still happening, she says she lost a recording contract.
Leaving didn’t feel like an option. Susie worried about her children, her ministry and, perhaps most of all, disappointing God. “I thought God would disown me and I’d have no future with Him if I didn’t stay within my marriage vows,” she says. “I had to forgive, try to forget and go on.”
So she did.
Until one particularly painful day when, after an argument, her husband rode away on his horse, and Susie went to her bedroom and cried. In desperation she prayed: “God, why don’t you do something?” In the quietness of her heart, she heard: “Why don’t you?” Those words followed by “I love you. You are my child” breathed new life into her. She began to see that doing what others expected of her to keep the peace was keeping her in an abusive marriage. For Susie, obedience now meant stepping out of the shadow, standing firm as her own woman and trusting God with what came next.
The marriage ended after 25 years.
IN LIVING COLOUR
Starting over didn’t suddenly make life easy. During a separation that lasted more than two years, Susie found herself doing things she had never had to do alone. She booked her own concerts, carried her own bags, set up her sound system, and drove herself from one event to the next, sometimes sleeping in the back of her Ford Excursion. “I got strong and independent,” she says. “I told my story.”
Susie also had to rethink something she had struggled with for years. “I always tried to please other people,” she says. “It’s a hard habit to shake.”
Her renewed relationship with God was teaching her something different: “I have had to learn that God loves me for who I am, not what I do.” And then she says it even more simply: “I became His daughter.”
One of the first signs that life had changed was something remarkably ordinary: colour. “I didn’t realize how depressed I was,” she says. “I suddenly noticed I was seeing colour again. That was such a magnificent thing to me.”
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE
Years later, at a family conference in Cannon Beach, Oregon, Susie met Mark Eaton. “It really was God,” she says. “He probably orchestrated in one second what it would take humans months to do. It was ALL GOD!”
What struck her about Mark was how freely he sang and played his guitar. “I wished I could just throw back my head and sing like him,” she remembers. “I was too pent up, cautious, careful, not singing out of a pure love of Christ.”
Mark wasn’t interested in sharing Susie’s spotlight. “He didn’t want to be on stage,” she explains. “He just wanted to be my support.”
Today, music and ministry take them on the road together. Susie continues her long association with Cowboy Church, bringing Christian worship into the rodeo and ranching world she has known since childhood. She also co-hosts the weekly Cowboy Church television program and hosts Jesus Listens: Stories of Prayer on YouTube, where guests talk about prayer and their experiences with God.
At 68, Susie doesn’t pretend the difficult parts of her life didn’t happen. “I am a woman with scars who can relate to others going through what I went through,” she says. She hopes she is now “more forgiving, kind, thoughtful, less stressed, less in a hurry.”
She can now look back at the ranch in Oklahoma, Grandma Smith on her knees praying beside the bed, the years singing beside Reba, her own music career, motherhood, a marriage she fought to save, the decision to leave, starting over, meeting Mark and the life they share today. There were plenty of times when she couldn’t see where any of it was going. “I can see God’s hand in so many things now,” Susie says. “There’s always something to limit our seeing and hearing Him, but just like how Mark and I met, if God wants us to hear Him, He will get our attention.”
After everything, ask Susie where God was through it all and her answer is still the same: “In His faithfulness.”
If you know the McEntire name but haven’t yet heard Susie sing, start there. Her catalogue spans 20 albums, moving between Christian country, gospel, hymns and songs you may already know by heart. She has also put her own stamp on familiar favourites including James Taylor’s Shower the People, Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend, Bill Withers’ Lean on Me and Van Morrison’s Have I Told You Lately.
To hear more of Susie’s own catalogue, try God’s Still in Control, Raised on Faith, Count It All Joy and Chase the Wind. Search “Susie McEntire” on your preferred music streaming service, visit SusieMcEntire.com to learn more about her music and upcoming appearances, or follow her on Instagram @susieqmaceaton.
Want to see in colour too?
Sometimes we don't understand how dark a season has become until we step outside it.
At BE, we believe faith isn’t about religion. It’s a personal relationship with a God who loves us and meets us where we are. If you’re ready for a fresh encounter with God or want to (re)ignite your faith, you can pray something like this:
“God, I know You love me, even though I’ve been distant. I come to you today as a sinner aware of my need for a Saviour. I repent of my sins, ask for your forgiveness and surrender my life to You (again). I believe Jesus is your son and the Saviour of the World. I believe He died and rose again to give me life, peace, victory, joy and hope. Lord Jesus, today I (re)dedicate my life to You. I want to follow You, live according to Your Word, and have a deeper relationship with You. This is my new beginning!”
Now what?
(Re)dedicating your life to God is a lifelong journey, one where He transforms you from the inside out, bit by bit.
Just like any relationship, faith grows when you invest time and intention:
Spend time in God’s Word. Daily devotionals and Bible-reading plans such as those available through the Bible Gateway app are helpful tools.
Talk to God. Prayer doesn’t need to be formal or polished – just honest! Use your own words; speak with Him anywhere, any time.
Connect with other believers. Whether in person or online, life wasn’t meant to be lived alone.
If you prayed this prayer, get in touch! Follow us on IG, send us a DM or email us at info@bemagazine.ca, we’re here to support you as you learn to live your faith out loud!
