Gwen Stefani Was the Last Person Who Blake Shelton Thought Would Back Him After His Divorce

Blake Shelton once opened up about what it was like meeting Gwen Stefani for the first time in ‘The Voice’.

Blake Shelton wasn’t exactly looking for love again after his divorce from Miranda Lambert. But he found it in a very unexpected place after current wife Gwen Stefani came to offer her support.

Gwen Stefani turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Blake Shelton

Shelton and Stefani famously met for the first time when they were coaches for season 7 of The Voice. The pair couldn’t have crossed paths at a best, and perhaps even worse, time. Stefani was just coming out of a divorce from her longtime husband Gavin Rossdale. Meanwhile, Shelton famously split from her wife of four years Miranda Lambert.

Shelton and Stefani knew next to nothing about each other at the time. But they immediately left significant impressions on one another. At Stefani’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, for instance, Shelton gushed about how Stefani was unlike any celebrity he’d ever met.

“The first time that I ever met Gwen was in 2014. She wasn’t like any other famous person I had ever met before,” Shelton remembered. “She drove herself to work in a black minivan with car seats in it. She didn’t role in with security. She came in with a baby and two little boys – which at the time worked like security because at the time no one was going near [her]. It was chaos.”

They bonded over their traumatic martial experiences. And although they had a few differences, they had a lot more in common than they initially thought. However, neither thought they’d find what they needed in each other.

“Of all the people, she was the last person I expected to step out of the crowd and be the one to have my back, and be there and be the shoulder and be the one to fight that fight with me, getting back on my feet. And out of nowhere, there she was,” Shelton once told Country Countdown USA (via Us Weekly).

Likewise, Stefani still had trouble believing Shelton turned out to be the one for her.

“It was like one of those miracle situations where I didn’t see it coming,” she said on The Drew Barrymore Show (via Today). “I was like, ‘I’m going to wake up every day. I’m going to have a coffee. I’m going to take care of my kids and then I’m going to go to bed.’ Like, I’m never going to kiss anyone, I’m never going to — you know me, I thought my life was over. And then Blake Shelton’s like, ‘Hey! I’m Blake Shelton.’”

Why Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton waited so long to get married

After meeting each other, Stefani and Shelton started dating in November, 2015. But although they fell for each other quickly, Shelton didn’t propose to Stefani until October, 2020. Despite their love for one another, there were other factors they needed to figure out before walking down the aisle.

“There’s a lot to consider when you have so many people involved, you know children and their hearts,” Stefani once told Today. “Everybody in my family, his family, we all went through a lot together … then as the years were going by it was sort of like, [marriage] didn’t need to happen. And there was a lot of healing to do.”

At the same time, Stefani asserted that she did get worried after a while that Shelton might not propose.

“I was kinda getting a little bit anxious like, ‘Wait a minute, what are we doing?’ … I started having a little insecurity,” Stefani said.

The two married on July, 3, 2021, and have both been going strong ever since.