Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani began dating in late 2015 after meeting on the set of The Voice, where they were both serving as coaches, in 2014. Initially just coworkers, they ended up connecting on a romantic level while bonding over their 2015 divorces, Shelton from Miranda Lambert and Stefani from Gavin Rossdale.
Stefani admits Shelton “Changed My Life”
In a new interview with PEOPLE, Stefani reflected on the beginning of their relationship, revealing that the country star “changed my life.”
“When I [started dating] Blake, that’s when I felt home,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, this is where I’m supposed to be, with this guy.”
The No Doubt singer added that she “didn’t see any of this coming with Blake.” “This was just a big old ‘What?’” she continued. “It was an amazing gift to experience love like that for the first time.”
“Unlikely Situation”
In 2016, Stefani told Howard Stern that her relationship with Shelton “was the most unlikely situation to ever happen,” recalling that when Shelton told The Voice team about his split from Lambert, she “went white.”
“I was in shock, because I felt like he was exposing me [and] I just couldn’t even wrap my head around it,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on with me… had this huge weight on me and nobody but my parents and obviously everybody involved knew.”
She began to open up to the country singer about her own situation and the two started talking. “It was just unbelievable that God would put us in the position to have each other at that moment, in the exact same moment,” Stefani said, adding that “it was an incredible gift to be able to have a friend” and that she “wasn’t trying to start a relationship” but that it just happened.
The Pair Got Married In July of 2021
Shelton and Stefani married in 2021 and now spend much of their time at their home in Shelton’s home state of Oklahoma.
“I am not really a dirt person, a bug person, I don’t like that much humidity,” Stefani joked to PEOPLE. “But it’s so beautiful [in Oklahoma], and you kind of feel like you’re going into this vortex. Nature — and God — is all right there.”
The singer added that she’s now doing many of the same things she once saw her parents enjoy.
“When I was young, I’d walk home from school and see my mom in her shorts doing her gardening, and my dad would be cutting the trees and make me pick up the branches. I’d be like, ‘I’m never having a tree at my house,’” she recalled.
Now, Stefani is a self-described “garden flower nerd” who “just had the most incredible dahlias ever.”
“When we get to Oklahoma, we’re constantly working — and it’s a different kind of work,” she explained. “It’s probably what my mom was doing back in the day, and now I get it!”
Shelton Is A Stepdad To Stefani’s Three Sons
Stefani is mom to three sons, Kingston, 17, Zuma, 15, and Apollo, 9, who she shares with Rossdale, and is happy to be able to parent them in a present way.
“I took Kingston on a world tour [when he was 9 months old]. I would have to nurse him, then get onstage, come off, and he would twirl my ponytail,” she recalled. “That’s when things got really hard for me emotionally. That time is so precious, and you don’t want to miss anything.”
“When my kids were teenagers, I really wanted to make sure that I was home for them — and here we are,” she added.
Shelton left The Voice after the end of its most recent season, but Stefani is back in her coaching chair this fall.
“I was really weirded out like, ‘What’s it going to be like without Blake?’ But we are having so much fun,” she said of returning to the gig. “At the end of the day, coaching these humans who are so gifted … I love it.”
