Blake Shelton's Relationship History

Long before Blake Shelton's signature snark earned him a spot squabbling with other singers on "The Voice," the future Sexiest Man Alive was just your average country boy from Oklahoma who was trying to find some upside to competing in child pageants. In 2015, Shelton explained to ET why he let his mom keep entering him in the competitions. "I was picking up chicks, man," he revealed. The talent segments also allowed him to sing onstage. But first, as Shelton so eloquently put it, "I had to do the evening wear and all that crap."

Shelton's love for the ladies sparked an early interest in songwriting. But he doesn't look back fondly on his 15-year-old self's first lyrical endeavor, which he put to paper while he was wallowing in self-pity. "I wrote a song called 'That Girl Made a Fool Out of Me,'" he recalled to Nash Country Weekly. "It was about a girl who I had a crush on in high school and who, looking back on it, honestly didn't care too much about me ... I think it's probably in the Top 10 of worst songs ever written in the history of the earth." He'd eventually start having a little more luck in the dating department. On "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," Shelton revealed that growing his legendary mullet actually improved his love life (via HuffPost). But while it looked pretty sweet, it didn't shield the "Honey Bee" hitmaker from heartbreak.

During his early days on the road, Blake Shelton accumulated a number of exes in Texas. While regaling a San Antonio concert crowd with tales of his romantic conquests, he didn't exactly paint them in the most flattering light. "I can never live in Texas," he said, per MySA. "You don't want to be married to Miranda Lambert and run into some old skank I used to date."

In between his Texas exes and Lambert, Shelton was married to Kaynette Williams, a former schoolmate from Ada, Oklahoma. According to Williams, Shelton always possessed the witty personality that millions of fans would someday fall in love with. The couple started dating in high school, and in November 2003, they got hitched in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They invited no guests to their intimate ceremony. "It was just Kaynette, myself, the guy who married us, and a photographer," Shelton recalled to Nash Country Weekly. He explained 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.

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 the song of the summer at the time was Gwen Stefani's solo smash "Hollaback Girl." But the tune Shelton and Lambert were asked to sing for the "CMT 100 Greatest Duets" special wasn't as fresh as a bunch of green B-A-N-A-N-A-S; it was the 1981 country classic "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma." 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. "I was a married guy, you know? Standing up there and singing with somebody and going, 'Man, this shouldn't be happening,'" Shelton confessed in the 2011 "Behind the Music: Miranda Lambert" VH1 special (via Entertainment Weekly). "Looking back on that, I was falling in love with her, right there on stage." Lambert, meanwhile, recalled in a "Dateline" interview, "It was just this draw to each other." She was, however, aware that Shelton already had a wife and tried to remind herself of that fact. "I knew better, like this is off-limits," she revealed. Still, she couldn't stay away from Shelton and told W that they tried to be platonic pals. "But our chemistry made the romantic relationship inevitable," she said.

After Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert realized that they couldn't deny their feelings for each other, Shelton made the decision to end his marriage to Kaynette Williams in 2006. However, it was hard for him to walk away from his wife of three years. "That was easily the toughest thing that I've been through," he said during a 2014 "60 Minutes" interview. "I put my divorce up there with my brother's death and that was a tough, tough call to make."

Unfortunately for Shelton, his work wasn't exactly a welcome distraction; he was recording his album "Pure BS," and its many tracks about nursing a broken heart kept him on an emotional rollercoaster. "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," he told AP (via Post Bulletin). 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. "Kaynette was not only a loyal wife, she stood by Blake through the roughest of times while he was struggling," a source told the National Enquirer. "But Blake turned his back on her for Miranda."

Gwen Stefani had been a first-time mom for 10 months when Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert made their red carpet debut at the CMT Awards in 2007. But the country singers likely weren't keeping up with the latest Stefani gossip when they settled into their new life together. They began co-writing music, including Lambert's 2009 track "Love Song," and in 2008, they hit the road together on tour. Ahead of that experiment, the couple confessed to CMT that their relationship had already hit a few bumps in the road. "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," Shelton said.

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 2010, Shelton told AP (via Houma Today), "I can see us getting married one day, maybe, where before you would never have gotten me to say something like that." The couple was rocking some of their hunting camouflage and fishing on Shelton's ranch when he popped the question that May. "Well ... Ol' Blake finally got a brain!! And ... I didn't say no!!!" Lambert tweeted. She later recalled to People, "He called my dad and got his blessing first. That was so Southern and old-school and perfect."

Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton stayed true to their country roots when planning their rustic May 2011 wedding at the Don Strange Ranch in Texas. The bride rocked cowboy boots underneath her wedding gown, and while her footwear was of the fancy custom variety, she didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on her dress. She told Us Weekly that her mother had previously gotten hitched in the garment, so it also served as her something borrowed. "My parents have been married for 33 years, so this dress is already a good-luck charm," she said. Shelton was a fan of the classic look. "I couldn't get over how beautiful she was," he gushed. Shelton's attire included a pair of Wranglers.

An arch constructed out of deer antlers decorated the couple's wedding altar, and guests sipped their drinks from Mason jars. As for what was on the menu, Shelton and Lambert didn't solely rely on a caterer. "We shot and fried venison we raised on our Oklahoma ranch," Lambert told Taste of Home. "We're big hunters, and we were able to share a small taste of something important to us." Guests who chowed down on their special grub were a who's who of country stars, including Dierks Bentley, Martina McBride, Charles Kelly, Reba McEntire, and Kelly Clarkson. Neal McCoy even performed at the couple's rowdy wedding reception.

Life didn't slow down for Blake Shelton and Miranda 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 (via CNN) that she was caring for over half a dozen rescue dogs at the time. "The dogs are really good birth control!" she quipped. But three months later, Shelton revealed that he was contemplating his future as a father. "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," he said, per People.

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. "I'm jumping in the car and hauling a** to Texas," she said. "Our child is going to be born a Texan." 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 that they wanted to keep prioritizing their careers. "We're a couple of years away from seriously talking about [having a baby]," he said. Two years later, Lambert told Good Housekeeping that such a discussion hadn't happened yet. "I don't want to raise a child on a bus or in L.A.," she explained.

Before Kaynette Williams and Blake Shelton divorced, the couple had been residing in Tennessee. Williams returned to her home state of Oklahoma after their split, where she kept a low profile for years. Shelton, meanwhile, continued to bring up their divorce in interviews from time to time, and a source told the National Enquirer that it pained Williams to hear some of the comments Shelton was making about their marriage.

But matters got much worse for Shelton's ex when Miranda Lambert decided to purchase her own property in the Sooner State. For Williams, "The House That Built Me" singer's new digs were too close for comfort. "It just felt like Oklahoma wasn't big enough for all of us," Williams told the National Enquirer. She then moved to Kansas and started rebuilding her life yet again. She had a rewarding job as an elementary school teacher, and she eventually found love with another cowboy: rodeo champ Cody Joe Scheck.

As for Shelton and Lambert's living arrangements, the couple didn't move under one roof permanently after they tied the knot. The home and plot of land that Lambert owned weren't exactly within walking distance of her husband's abode — which is why she decided to keep the property. "We mostly live at Blake's," she told W in 2012. "But, if you're pissed, 10 miles away is far enough. If we have a fight, I can say, 'Go home' or 'I'm going home.'"

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. "Gwen's quickly becoming one of my favorite people that I've had the chance to work with on the show," he said in a September 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly. "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." 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. "This is not the future we envisioned," they said in a statement to Us Weekly. "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, "I have 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. "People would come up to me like, 'When you going to do something, you gotta hurry,'" he told KXII.

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 Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert's 2015 divorce announcement. Sources told TMZ that Shelton became convinced that 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 an 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," he wrote.

Lambert insiders, meanwhile, told TMZ that Shelton was the unfaithful spouse and that he had cheated on her with another well-known musician. Days later, singer Cady Groves spoke to InTouch about past 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. "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," she said (via Hollywood Life). According to TMZ, Shelton threatened to take InTouch to court over its reporting about Groves. In its warning to the tabloid, Shelton's legal team wrote, "Mr. Shelton did not have a sexual relationship or affair of any nature whatsoever with Ms. Groves."

Neither Shelton nor Lambert ever confessed to being unfaithful. However, in a 2018 interview with Hits Daily Double, Lambert said, "I get divorced and get my heart broken. I break hearts."

In 2015, it was reported that Gwen Stefani was divorcing her husband of 13 years, Gavin Rossdale, because she discovered that he was having an affair with their children's nanny. Her marriage started unraveling while 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 the "Boys 'Round Here" singer and the "Just a Girl" hitmaker 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. "It was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time," Stefani told Harper's Bazaar. 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."

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. Shefani 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 such as 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. "Gwen, she loves riding and she loves horses," he told ET. "It's actually so funny that people are so shocked by that." When Stefani had custody of the three sons she shares with Gavin Rossdale — Kingston, Zuma, and Apollo — they would also visit the ranch. While chatting with CMT in 2018, Shelton revealed that he also found the perfect gift for the boys: their very own ATVs. "I was teaching Kingston how to drive and he took off driving like a maniac into the middle of the frozen pond," Shelton recalled (via iHeart).

Blake Shelton didn't have any experience with fatherhood when Gwen 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 Rossdale soon became like family. "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," he said. Three years later, Shelton admitted that it was a bit sobering when he realized that he couldn't just act like the boys' overgrown BFF. "You do have to consider after a while that they start to listen to things that you say, and there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that," he said on "Today."

Before he officially became a part of the family, Shelton made a decision about how he was going to propose to Stefani. "I didn't want to take her away or do something private away from the kids," he said on the "Bobby Bones Show." "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. On "The Kelly Clarkson Show," Stefani revealed that Shelton hid her engagement ring inside a cabinet and asked her to retrieve something from it. Kingston can be seen watching his mom react to the surprise proposal in a cute Instagram pic.

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," saying, "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. "Our bride wanted to make a sentimental statement by recreating her parent's wedding cake," read a post on the bakery's Instagram account. And on the "Today" show, Daly said that everyone needed handkerchiefs when Shelton performed a song for his bride titled "We Can Reach the Stars" that he had penned instead of writing his vows.

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 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," he explained. "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. "But you can't buy time back," he noted. "[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. "They've taught me something about myself that I never knew: I'm more than just a country singer or a goofy guy," he said. "I'm someone they actually lean on."