Cover Story: Rex and Sherese Glendenning

Land, Longhorns and Legacy

Long before North Texas became one of the fastest-growing regions in America, before toll roads and master-planned communities, the Glendenning family knew this land by another name: home.

Before there was a Dallas North Tollway pushing north. Before Celina became one of the fastest-growing cities in America. Before developers, master-planned communities, and billion-dollar land deals. There was a Scottish immigrant, 160 acres of Texas soil, and a family that never stopped believing in the value of the land.

If you’ve driv

en anywhere in North Texas, you have seen the signs: “GF”, “Glendenning”, “REX Real Estate”, “Glendenning Farms”.  You’ve probably seen the longhorns grazing across rolling hills dotted with ponds.  If you ever wondered who was behind all of it or what the story is, I invite you to learn about the land, the longhorns and the legacy that ties them all together.

For six generations, their roots have run deep in Texas soil, beginning in 1887 when Rex Glendennin

g's great-grandfather, Alexander Glendenning, immigrated from Scotland. Through the Homestead Act, he settled on 160 acres outside what was then the tiny community of Celina. Alexander and his wife would raise eleven children there, while Rex's grandfather, Thomas John "Daddy Tom" Glendenning, was born in Texas shortly after the family's voyage from Scotland.

That pioneering spirit would become the foundation of a family legacy. “My grandfather loved the land, and my father loved the land,” Rex says. “I want it to matter to my children and my grandchildren too.”

Some of Rex's earliest memories were spent working alongside his grandfather in the cotton fields. Long before sunrise, “Daddy Tom” was already hard at work.

“By the time I'd get up, my grandfather had already been out there for an hour,” Rex recalls. “He'd always tell me, ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’”

The work ethic was strong, but so were the lessons in relationships.

As a teenager, Rex often accompanied his father, Don Glendenning, on trips throughout Louisiana and Mississippi buying and trading farm equipment. Those road trips became an education all their own.

“I learned many of my people skills from my father,” Rex says. “Negotiation skills. When to give a little and when to stand firm. The right thing to say at just the right moment. You can't learn those things in textbooks.”

And there was one tradition Rex remembers with a smile.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Coors Banquet Beer wasn't available east of the Mississippi River. Before crossing the Louisiana state line, father and son would stop at a Cork & Bottle liquor store and load eight or ten cases into the trunk.

“When Dad could see we were about to close a good deal, he'd give me a little wink,” Rex says. “I'd pop the trunk, grab a case of Coors, and quietly put it on the floorboard of the sales manager's pickup. That was our calling card.”

Those moments taught him that business was never just about transactions, it was about people.

Years later, when Rex married Sherese in 1984, the young couple had dreams, determination, and very little money.

“We were young, dumb and broke,” Rex says with a laugh.

That same year, while brokering a land transaction, one of his clients insisted on paying half of his commission with four Texas Longhorn heifers.

“I needed the money more than the longhorns,” Rex remembers. “But he pretty much demanded it.”

Sherese laughs at the memory.

“We didn't choose the longhorn business,” she says. “We were kind of forced into it, but thank goodness. The rest is history.” 

What began with four heifers and twenty acres soon became a passion.

“We got the Longhorn bug,” Rex says. “We started studying their history and how after the Civil War they became a currency for Texas.”

Through recessions, market crashes, and lean years, the couple built their lives together.

“We were plum broke,” Rex says. “But we rolled up our sleeves and worked our way through it.”

Sherese never stopped believing.

“Rex is very good at what he does,” she says. “I believed in him all along the way and just tried to do whatever I could do to help.”

Today, after more than four decades together, she remains his greatest partner.

“She’s been side by side with me through it all,” Rex says. “There's no way we could have done it without her.”

Together, they have brokered billions of dollars in land transactions, helped shape much of modern North Texas, and built one of the country's most respected Texas Longhorn programs.

Yet success hasn't changed what brings them joy.

“When we get home from work, we get in the truck and go look at the longhorns,” Sherese says. “That's our relief. That's our hobby.”

Spread across nineteen pastures, their cattle have become landmarks in their own right, delighting travelers throughout North Texas.

“All the phone calls we get from people telling us how much they enjoy the longhorns—it really makes it worthwhile,” Sherese says.

Despite their accomplishments, neither Rex nor Sherese are drawn to city lights.

“We'd rather be with the cows,” Rex says with a grin. “We'd rather be out looking at ponds and cattle than doing the high-society stuff.”

For them, land is more than an investment.

“There's just a deep love for how we got here,” Rex says. “Living off the land and respecting the land, that’s part of who we are.”

Today, the longhorns still graze across the hills of North Texas.  Travelers still slow down to admire them. Children still point at them from the backseat. And somewhere beyond the fences sits the same lesson that has carried the Glendenning family through six generations:

Land isn’t just something you own. It’s something you care for, protect, and ultimately leave behind for the next generation. That’s the kind of legacy that never goes out of style.

And when asked one final question—land or longhorns?—their answer comes without hesitation.

“Land,” Sherese says.

Rex smiles and nods.

“Because if you don't have the land,” he says, “you can't have the longhorns.”

And

if their story proves anything, it's that legacies aren't built overnight.

They're built together.

Through faith, hard work, and a love for the land that never fades.