True love is true love, even if it comes from an unlikely place. These three country music couples all have successful and enduring marriages, even though no one expected their relationship to last.
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Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo
There is nothing about Jelly Roll’s 2016 wedding to Bunnie Xo that hints that they would have one of the sweetest love stories in country music. Living out of his van at the time, the two eloped in Las Vegas, while on a bender, as Jelly Roll recalls. In fact, the two were so impaired, they aren’t exactly sure which date they said “I do.”
“We just don’t remember what day, which time anyways, because we were partying and drinking in Vegas,” Jelly Roll says (via Country Now). “It was like a four or five-day bender, and the marriage just happened in the middle of it.”
Fortunately, the relationship lasted. In 2023, the two renewed their wedding vows.
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani
There may not be a more unlikely country couple than Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. The two first met when they were coaches on Season 7 of The Voice. At the time, Shelton was married to Miranda Lambert, while Stefani was married to Gavin Rossdale. But by the time they began filming for Season 9 in 2015, both were in the middle of painful divorces, bonding over their shared pain.
“She didn’t tell me much, because we didn’t know each other at the time, but she said, ‘I’m going through something very similar to what you’re going through. I understand. And I hate it,’” Shelton tells Billboard.
“That’s kind of how our friendship and bond started, that day. … Next thing I know, I wake up, and she’s all I care about, and I’m wondering if she feels the same about me,” he adds.
The two wrote “Go Ahead And Break My Heart” about their relationship. The song became the first of many duets that the two have released together.
Shania Twain and Frederic Thiébaud
Like Shelton and Stefani, Shania Twain and Thiébaud bonded over shared pain. The difference is that they watched both their marriages crumble because of the other’s spouse.
In 1993, Twain married Robert “Mutt” Lange, a marriage that ended in 2008 after it was revealed that Lange was having an affair with Thiébaud’s wife, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, who at the time was a close friend of Twain.
Twain and Thiébaud began commiserating over their shock and sadness over their unexpected divorces.
“I got to observe Fred going through the same thing I was, and I admired how he handled it,” Twain tells Redbook. “That is where I fell in love with him because he was so exemplary in every way.”
The relationship eventually turned romantic, and in 2011, they got married in Puerto Rico.
Photo by Taylor Hill/WireImage
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