Blake Shelton may be an Oklahoma country boy who's "happy anywhere," but only a few
women have been able to tie him down. From fighting feelings to finding forever after,
this is one relationship timeline that's just a little bit B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
While regaling a San Antonio concert crowd with
tales of his romantic conquests in 2011, Blake Shelton joked:
"I can never live in Texas. You don't want to be
married to Miranda Lambert and run into some old skank I used to date."
But before Texas, and before Lambert, Shelton was married to Kaynette Williams, his high school
sweetheart from Ada, Oklahoma. In November 2003, the couple got hitched in Gatlinburg,
Tennessee. They invited no guests to their intimate ceremony — Shelton explained to
Nash Country Weekly that they decided to keep their wedding so small because his career was
kicking into high gear, and it was rare for the couple to be alone together. So for them,
sharing their first moments as husband and wife with as few people as possible
made their nuptials more cherished than a splashy ceremony would have been. He said:
"It was just Kaynette, myself, the guy who married us, and a photographer."
Shelton sweetly serenaded his bride with the Conway Twitty song "Julia," which impressed
the preacher — but only because he had no idea Shelton was already a successful country star.
Blake Shelton had been a married man for two years when he met former "Nashville
Star" competitor Miranda Lambert. It was June 2005, and Shelton and Lambert were paired to
sing the 1981 country classic "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma" for the "CMT 100
Greatest Duets" special. After the event aired, a CMT recap said of the singers:
"Their sparks had some fans thinking they might
be romantically linked. (Blame the power of a good duet sung very convincingly.)"
Shelton and Lambert would both later admit to feeling a spark ignite at
the time. In a 2011 interview for VH1's "Behind the Music," Shelton confessed:
"I was a married guy, you know? Standing up there and singing with somebody and going,
'Man, this shouldn't be happening.' Looking back on that, I was falling
in love with her, right there on [the] stage."
Lambert, meanwhile, recalled in a "Dateline" interview the
same year that she had to remind herself Shelton already had a wife.
"It was just this draw to each other. I knew better, like this is off-limits."
Still, Lambert couldn't stay away from Shelton.
She told W that they tried to keep things platonic:
"We ended up hanging out and [we] were friends for a while,
but our chemistry made the romantic relationship inevitable."
Once Shelton and Lambert realized that they couldn't deny their feelings for each other,
Shelton made the decision to end his marriage to Kaynette Williams. But it wasn't easy to
walk away from his wife of three years. During a 2014 "60 Minutes" interview, he explained:
"That was easily the toughest thing that I've been through. I put my
divorce up there with my brother's death and that was a tough, tough call to make."
Shelton couldn't distract himself with work, either; he was recording his album "Pure BS," and
its many tracks about nursing a broken heart kept him on an emotional rollercoaster. He told the AP:
"I went through days where I knew I wanted to get a divorce,
and then the next day I'd wake up and wouldn't want to get a divorce."
According to the singer, one of the few bright spots of that dark time
was that his state of mind made his music feel more authentic than it had before.
Shelton's ex wasn't exactly having the time of her life, either. Williams claimed that
Shelton was "guilty of inappropriate marital conduct" in divorce filings,
an apparent reference to his relationship with Lambert. A source told the National Enquirer:
"Kaynette was not only a loyal wife, she stood by Blake through the roughest of
times while he was struggling. But Blake turned his back on her for Miranda."
Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert made their red carpet debut at the CMT Awards in 2007.
The pair began co-writing music, and in 2008, they hit the road together on tour.
"It helped us get to know each other better,
just on another level, besides just dating and being best friends."
Before heading out, however, the couple confessed to CMT that their
relationship had already hit a few bumps in the road. Shelton said:
"There were times early on there that — I know that she did and I know that
I did — we were just ready to give up on it and walk away from it because
there's nothing easy about having a relationship doing what we do."
But the singers stuck together. They bonded over their love of the great outdoors,
with Lambert telling Field & Stream that Shelton had started taking her bow hunting
in Oklahoma. And in May of 2010, Shelton popped the question. Lambert later recalled to People:
"He called my dad and got his blessing first. That was so Southern and old-school and perfect."
They were married a year later at the Don Strange Ranch in Texas.
Life didn't slow down for Shelton and Lambert after they tied the knot. Shelton had joined
the cast of "The Voice," which premiered in 2011, and in addition to being busy with her own career,
Lambert told Health that she was caring for over half a dozen rescue dogs at the time, quipping:
"The dogs are really good birth control!"
But three months later, Shelton revealed that he
was contemplating his future as a father. People noted him as saying:
"When I see my mom and dad with their grandkids and that relationship down
the road, that's what I'm looking forward to more than anything."
Lambert also began warming to the idea of starting a family. In fact, in an October 2011 interview
with Texas Monthly, she revealed that she already had a birthing plan and a hospital in mind. But as
time went on, the couple kept putting off having kids. In March 2012, Shelton told Us Weekly
that he and Lambert had decided instead to keep prioritizing their careers over children, saying:
"I think we both agree that we're a couple of years away from seriously talking about that."
But by 2015, such a discussion had yet to happen. Lambert told
Good Housekeeping that she still wasn't thinking about kids, saying:
"I want to be a little more settled. Part of me thinks I should try to plan it,
and part of me thinks God has a plan for my life, so why would I ever try to maneuver that?"
Before Gwen Stefani replaced Christina Aguilera on "The Voice" in 2014,
she couldn't name one Blake Shelton song. In a 2022 NBC Insider interview, she confessed:
"I didn't know that Blake even existed really in the world."
Shelton's knowledge of the No Doubt singer was also limited at the time. He told
ET that if her name came up in a conversation, he'd most likely say,
"Is that the girl that holds the orange up in the video?" It would be a few
years before Shelton learned that the fruit represented Stefani's Orange County roots.
Shelton learned that Stefani was so much more than a citrus lover after getting to
know her. In a September 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said:
"Gwen's quickly becoming one of my favorite people that I've had the
chance to work with on the show. I think she is the most normal person I have ever
met in Hollywood — outside of the fact that she says the word 'rad' a lot."
"Rad."
He also revealed that he had introduced Stefani to Miranda Lambert,
who was thrilled to get a chance to talk fashion with the style icon.
Meanwhile, Stefani's own significant other, rocker Gavin Rossdale, got to know the rest
of "The Voice" cast when he served as an adviser for his wife's team. At the time,
no one could have predicted that Shefani would soon become a pop culture phenomenon.
In 2015, Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert announced that their four-year marriage was
over. In a statement to Us Weekly, the pair said:
"This is not the future we envisioned. And it is
with heavy hearts that we move forward separately."
One insider told Page Six that the exes' priorities had started to shift;
Shelton was purportedly ready to start a family and spend more time with Lambert,
while she wanted to charge full steam ahead with her career.
But it was Shelton who saw a business opportunity when they called it quits.
The "I'll Name the Dogs" singer planned on remaining in Oklahoma and keeping his
ranch there, while Lambert — a Texas native — was ready to say sayonara to
the Sooner State. She had opened up a boutique in Tishomingo, Oklahoma,
called the Pink Pistol, and she decided to close up shop when she and Shelton divorced.
Shelton purchased the building from her in 2016 and told ET he had "a plan brewing." Tishomingo
is a small town, and the Pink Pistol's closing had such a negative economic impact on the
community that residents were begging Shelton to open a business of his own. He told KXII:
"People would come up to me like, 'When you going to do something, you gotta hurry.'"
In September 2017, Shelton gave the town Ole Red, a restaurant and concert venue. The old
Pink Pistol property had been converted into the tourist attraction's gift shop.
Infidelity rumors abounded in the wake of Shelton and Lambert's 2015 divorce announcement. Sources
told TMZ that Shelton became convinced Lambert had cheated on him with an unnamed party,
so he decided to pull the plug on their marriage. The outlet also mentioned a rumor concerning
a separate affair between Lambert and country singer Chris Young, who soon tweeted a denial:
"They are both my friends and I would not betray that friendship."
Lambert insiders, meanwhile, told TMZ that Shelton was the unfaithful spouse. Days
after the divorce was finalized, singer Cady Groves spoke to InTouch about rumors that she
had been romantically involved with Shelton. She'd been tweeting cryptically about lost
love and confirmed that her messages were meant for Shelton's eyes, saying:
"I want to talk to him. If I could only be face-to-face with him,
I have four questions for him. But he isn't talking to me."
TMZ reported that Shelton threatened to take InTouch to court over its reporting
about Groves. In its warning to the tabloid, Shelton's legal team made it clear that he
hadn't been involved in an "affair of any nature whatsoever" with Groves.
Neither Shelton nor Lambert ever confessed to being unfaithful. In
a 2018 interview with Hits Daily Double, however, Lambert said:
"I get divorced and get my heart broken. I break hearts."
In August 2015, it was reported that Gwen Stefani was divorcing Gavin Rossdale after 13 years of
marriage, because she discovered that he was having an affair with their children's nanny.
Her marriage started unraveling when she was filming her second season of "The Voice," and
she initially suffered in silence because she and Rossdale hadn't yet announced their separation.
Meanwhile, Shelton decided to warn the show's cast and crew that his own divorce was about to
become one of the hottest tabloid topics of the day. He told Billboard that he was surprised when
he noticed Stefani getting teary-eyed as he spoke but initially chalked it up to the singer being a
sympathetic softy. But then she took Shelton aside and surprised him again. He recalled:
"She said, 'I'm going through something very similar to
what you're going through. I understand. And I hate it.'"
Whereas Shelton and Stefani didn't have much in common before,
their shared misery gave them something to talk about that few
others in their inner circles could relate to. Stefani told Harper's Bazaar in 2016:
"It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through
the exact same thing at the exact same time."
"So then we just started this friendship, which was just,
unbelievable that God would put us in a position to have each other at that moment."
The singers started communicating via email and text before reaching the realization that
their friendship was on the verge of becoming something so much more. Shelton told Billboard:
"Gwen saved my life."
"At some point you're like, 'You know what, it just is what it is now.'"
The first hint that Blake Shelton's rockstar girlfriend was willing to go
more than a little bit country for him came in October 2015,
before they confirmed their romance. The pair was photographed at George Clooney's Halloween party,
and Gwen Stefani was clad in a cowgirl costume. As her relationship with Shelton progressed,
she started regularly rocking Western wear, including cowboy boots and garments dripping
with fringe. And she didn't just look the part of a country star; Shelton gave the
"Hella Good" singer her first No. 1 country hit when they recorded "Nobody But You" together.
The Anaheim native also started adapting to life on Shelton's Oklahoma ranch,
where a date night could end with a big brush pile being set aflame. Shelton went
out of his way to help Stefani feel at home, even buying her a horse.
"I actually got her a horse, and I got myself a horse at the same time because…"
"Oh, how cool!" "Gwen, she loves riding and she loves horses."
When Stefani had custody of the three sons she shares with Rossdale — Kingston, Zuma,
and Apollo — they would also visit the ranch. And Shelton also found
the perfect gift for the boys: their very own ATVs. He told CMT in 2018:
"I was teaching Kingston how to drive and he took
off driving like a maniac into the middle of the frozen pond."
Shelton didn't have any experience with fatherhood when Stefani's sons entered his life,
and navigating his new role as a not-quite stepdad was tricky at first. But in a 2017
People interview, he revealed that Kingston, Zuma, and Apollo soon became like family. He said:
"They're so damn funny. It's just my first time being around it,
and it's easy to fall in love with those kids."
Three years later, Shelton admitted on the "Today" show that it was a bit
sobering when he realized he couldn't just act like the boys' overgrown BFF.
"You do have to consider after a while, they start to listen
to things that you say, and there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that."
Before he officially became a part of the family, Shelton made a decision about how he was going to
propose to Stefani. In an interview for the "Bobby Bones Show," he explained:
"I didn't want to take her away or do something private away from the
kids. I felt like it was important for the kids to be a part of that moment."
Shelton decided to invite all the couple's loved ones to
his ranch to celebrate Stefani's 51st birthday in 2020. During an appearance
on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" that year, Stefani revealed that Shelton hid her
engagement ring inside a cabinet and asked her to retrieve something from it.
"So I open the cabinet and there was like a ring in a box,
and I was like, 'Ahhh, like what? Are you serious?'"
Gwen Stefani got another shot at that simple kind of life that she always
dreamed of when she and Blake Shelton tied the knot in July 2021. They chose
to get married at a place that held a lot of happy memories for them — Shelton's
Tishomingo ranch — and they asked "The Voice" host Carson Daly to do
the honor of officiating the event. Stefani explained the choice on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
"He's the one person that we both know so well, and we've known through the years."
Daly's closeness to the couple helped make the intimate event even more of a family affair.
Those ties that bind are clearly precious to Stefani, who asked for the names of herself,
her sons, and Shelton to be embroidered on her wedding veil. On Instagram, Vera Wang
claimed credit for the gossamer accessory and Stefani's gown. Shelton surely had to
appreciate its mullet-like, high-low silhouette, which showcased Stefani's stiletto cowboy boots.
We're guessing Stefani's mom and dad needed handkerchiefs handy when they
saw their daughter's towering wedding cake, which she had ordered from Fancy
Cakes by Lauren. A post on the bakery's Instagram account read:
"Our bride wanted to make a sentimental statement by recreating her parent's wedding cake."
And on the "Today" show, Daly said that everyone needed handkerchiefs
when Shelton opted to perform a song for his bride instead of reciting written vows.
"He wrote her a song and he sings her a song while he's crying that he wrote specifically for her,
uh, 'Reach the Star,' I think it was called, and not a dry eye in the house."
In 2022, Blake Shelton announced that an era was coming to an end. After over a decade of slamming
that shiny red button and spinning around in his seat, he was leaving "The Voice." In his
Instagram announcement, he didn't explain why he'd decided that it was time to retire as the show's
only remaining O.G. coach, only saying that it was a tough decision. But in January 2023,
he told "Access Hollywood" that bonding with Gwen Stefani's sons had basically
made him realize that he'd rather spend more time with them and their mom than at work.
"I'm not the first person that I think about anymore. I got a more important job."
In a 2022 interview with People, Shelton also pointed out that he's had many years of
success as an entertainer, which means that Farmer Blake has a sizeable nest egg. So,
it's not like he feels any pressure to keep his nose to the grindstone. He noted:
"But you can't buy time back. [Family] is what I want to invest in now."
While Shelton is supposed to be the one serving as a mentor to his stepsons,
he's also learning some invaluable life lessons from the boys. He said:
"They've taught me something about myself that I never knew:
I'm more than just a country singer or a goofy guy. I'm someone they actually lean on."