Reba McEntire has plenty of fans, thanks to her almost 50-year career in country music, plus her acting career, appearing in movies, on TV and on Broadway. One of her biggest fans, Iain Armitage, is also a co-star on the hit TV show, Young Sheldon. Armitage plays Sheldon Cooper on the popular sitcom, while McEntire appeared on the show for three seasons as hairstylist June Ballard.

“She is one of the best people I have ever met in my life,” Armitage gushes to Everything Nash. “What you see is what you get. She is perfect and wonderful and nice and lovely, and everything you would want. They say, ‘Don’t meet your heroes,’ but she is one of the nicest people I have ever gotten to meet. She’s so down to earth, so funny, so sweet, so kind.

“And,” he adds with a laugh, “her and her now-boyfriend, Rex Linn, kind of got together on our show, so I get to claim partial credit.”

Indeed, it was on Young Sheldon that McEntire and Linn, who originally met on the set of the 1991 film, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, reconnected, with their friendship evolving into a sweet and enduring romance.

“Right before the pandemic, January of 2020, I had gone out to LA to shoot Young Sheldon,” McEntire previously recalled on Live With Kelly and Ryan. “Well, a good friend of mine that I’d met in ’91, on The Gambler movie with Kenny Rogers, Rex Linn, he was also doing Young Sheldon. So he texted me and said, ‘Hey, you’re coming out to LA. Let’s have dinner.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

Unfortunately, soon after McEntire and Linn reconnected, the entire world shut down due to the pandemic, which began as McEntire was mourning the loss of her mother, Jacqueline, who passed away on March 14, 2020. But even though they couldn’t be together in person, Linn found a way to support McEntire in her grief.

“Every day there was a new something coming in,” McEntire recalled on The Jennifer Hudson Show.  “We live in southeastern Oklahoma, Susie does… and it takes you a long time to get anywhere. So, here comes UPS or Federal Express, and Mark Eaton, my brother-in-law, was standing out on the front porch and said, ‘What’s he gonna bring today? What’s he sending?’”

“He sent pecan pie, lobster tail, steaks — Perini steaks from south Texas — and boy, it was a good time,” she continued. “McConnell’s ice cream. My little sister would ration us. We’d just get one little scoop per night while we were watching Ozark. She was saving it.”

Armitage is part of Dolly Parton‘s inaugural Pet Gala, joining an all-star cast that includes Lainey Wilson, Chris Janson, Carly Pearce and more. Jane Lynch is co-hosting with Parton, while Kelly Osbourne and Rachel Smith are serving as the runway correspondents. The two-hour special will air on Wednesday, February 21, at 9:00 PM ET on CBS.