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JoAnna García Swisher doesn’t just want her former Reba love interest Steve Howey to make a Sweet Magnolias cameo.
“Yes [to a Sweet Magnolias cameo for Steve]. Yes to all of the things. I would jump at the chance to work with Steve again,” Swisher, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting her partnership with Ziploc. “We have talked about it.”
Swisher noted that it was all about finding the right project.
“I have so much love for him and we have obviously just this really special and unique chemistry that is just rare,” she gushed. “He’s so wildly talented and he made me look good for so many years. Just to be his partner in crime on [Reba] and he was just so inherently brilliant and funny.”
For Swisher, the answer is “1,000 percent” yes when it comes to any possible onscreen reunion with Howey, 48, adding, “I don’t know if it’ll be Van and Cheyenne. But I can definitely say that I will text him often. I’ll be like, ‘Do you want to do a cowboy romance or something like that? I think we should make that happen. Let’s start manifesting that.”
A cowboy romance sounds perfect to Us after waiting for Garcia and Howey to work together after they played husband and wife on Reba. The hit sitcom, which aired from 2001 to 2007, starred Reba McEntire, Melissa Peterman, Christopher Rich, Swisher and Howey. Reba followed a single mom who had to start over after her husband left her for another woman. Reba (McEntire) attempted to start fresh while raising three kids — including her pregnant teen daughter (Swisher) and her boyfriend (Howey).
McEntire and Peterman have since reunited on NBC’s Happy’s Place, which allowed them to bring on some familiar faces. Howey made his Happy’s Place debut in December 2024 but told Us at the time that he wasn’t sure he would have an onscreen reunion with Swisher.
“I kind of like this idea of all of us coming back in different forms. I had my single guest star episode, and JoAnna should have her single guest star episode,” he explained at the time. “Because we’re not playing Van or Cheyenne [from Reba].”
Swisher, for her part, is thrilled at the chance to make a guest appearance in a future episode of Happy’s Place just to work with McEntire, 70, and Peterman, 54, again.
“I cannot wait to go shake it up over there with them,” she shared. “Steve Howey has already done it, and Chris Rich has done it.”
Swisher continued: “This is my family. We are all so very close, but getting the opportunity to slide back into a sitcom stage with all of them would be so exciting. I would not be surprised if that was in the very near future.”
For now though, Swisher has partnered up with Ziploc to help show families across North America that food preservation doesn’t have to be complicated by sharing fresh tips for a smarter lunch routine.
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“Ziploc is very much a part of our daily lives, and it was really fun. We care a lot about food waste in our family. We talk about that a lot. I was really excited to share the ways that we try to minimize food waste in our lives,” she explained. “My kids are getting older and they have a lot of opinions about their lunches. All of that is really centered around our Ziploc bags.”
Swisher broke down her approach, adding, “We create these little prep stations so we have just little ways to make life a little easier in the morning. Then I don’t open up a lunchbox at the end of the day that is filled with food. I’m always looking for ways to make sure that my girls are getting well-balanced, healthy lunches and I love good organization and making things easy, and Ziploc helps with all of those.”
She concluded: “Even for me, right now I’m working on season 5 of Sweet Magnolias, and I take a lunchbox to work because I’m always nibbling on things and wanting to have healthy, quick things. I’m always dipping into our little bin of snacks that make grab-and-go easy and help keep things fresher longer. It makes it easy and everything looks good too.”
English (US) ·