Reba McEntire knows what it is to endure sorrow and loss. In 1991, the country superstar lost seven of her band members and her tour manager, who died in a tragic plane crash after a concert.

The superstar and her band performed a private show in San Diego on March 16, 1991, and there were two planes waiting at Brown Field Municipal Airport to carry the band members to Fort Wayne, Ind., to perform the next concert on their schedule.

The band members and tour manager flew on ahead while McEntire, her then-husband and manager Narvel Blackstock and her stylist, Sandi Spika, stayed overnight in San Diego.

McEntire would tearfully recall what happened next in an emotional interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2012. The second plane took off and proceeded unencumbered to its destination, but the first aircraft to depart met with disaster just ten miles east of the airport.

“The tip of the wing of the airplane hit a rock on the side of Otay Mountain, and it killed everyone on the plane,” McEntire recounted to Winfrey. “When we were notified, Narvel went and met with our pilot, and he told us what had happened.

And Narvel came back to the hotel room where I was — it was two or three o’clock in the morning — and he said one of the planes had crashed, and I said, ‘Are they OK?’ He said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I said, ‘But you’re not sure?’ He said, ‘I don’t think so.’”