Gwen Stefani is living her best life at 55 years old. A multifaceted talent, she recently released her fourth solo album titled Bouquet, continues to appear as a coach on the reality singing competition The Voice, and has two successful brands — her L.A.M.B. clothing line and makeup brand GXVE Beauty.
Her personal life is flourishing as well. She’s married to country singer Blake Shelton and has a close relationship with her sons from her previous marriage — 18-year-old Kingston, 16-year-old Zuma, and 10-year-old Apollo. Things weren’t always this way, however, and she recently opened up to People about her devastating divorce from English musician Gavin Rossdale.
“Something that I wanted since I was a little girl is to be married and have this love that I saw my parents have and have babies. That dream was completely ruined; it was crushed, and I had to figure out how I was going to move forward and make a new dream.”
Stefani was inspired by her own parents’ relationship. She shared how growing up, her mom and dad exuded what a perfect relationship looked like. They met when they were 15 years old, fell in love, built a family, and are still happily married to this day. “They made us feel like we were everything to them,” the singer said. And she wanted that for herself, too.
Gwen Stefani found her happily ever after
Stefani met Rossdale in 1995 while she was on tour with her former band No Doubt. As the frontman of British rock band Bush, Rossdale shared a common bond with Stefani right from the beginning. The couple married in London in 2002 and had three children. However, their union wasn’t picture-perfect. They encountered challenges along the way including the revelation in 2004 that Rossdale had a 14-year-old daughter with singer Pearl Lowe and Courtney Love’s declaration in 2010 that she slept with the Bush frontman while he was dating Stefani. Still, the marriage stayed intact.
In 2015, after 20 years together — 13 of them married — the couple announced their separation. Rumors circulated that Rossdale had an affair with his children’s nanny, and Stefani filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. She recalled how she felt at that time in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar wherein she said, “It was the beginning of hell. Like six, seven, eight months of torture, trying to figure out this big secret.” What hurt most of all was she was away from her children half the time when they were with their father. With the end of her marriage, her childhood dream of growing old with her husband and having a loving relationship was gone.
Fortunately, Stefani was able to pick herself up. Over time, the exes have managed to maintain an amicable relationship and successfully co-parent their children. In 2014, Stefani met Shelton — who was married to Miranda Lambert — on The Voice. Their marriages ended at about the same time, and they grew closer due to the common situation they were in. The singer said she wasn’t looking for a relationship at that time, but the connection they had happened naturally. She said it was “unbelievable that God would put us in a position to have each other at that moment, in the same exact moment.” Stefani and Shelton started dating in late 2015 and were engaged five years later. They tied the knot on July 3, 2021, in an intimate ceremony at Shelton’s ranch in Oklahoma where The Voice host Carson Daly served as the officiant. After all the heartbreak Stefani endured from her first marriage, she ultimately rediscovered love with Shelton.