Gwen Stefani Shared Why She ‘Melts’ When She Thinks About Her 1st Date With Blake Shelton
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton have been together for nearly a decade. They met on the set of The Voice and bonded over the fact that they were both going through divorces. By 2016, Stefani and Shelton had gone public with their relationship and stepped out together at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Stefani shared why pictures from this event make her melt.
Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton went on their first public date in 2016
In 2016, Stefani and Shelton attended the Vanity Fair Oscar party together. While they had been together since late 2015, this was their first public outing as a couple.
“That was my first public date with Blake Shelton, actually,” Stefani said on The Kelly Clarkson Show (via NBC). “It was the Oscars Vanity Fair party. I think I played at the party and then we went out that night.”
Stefani later learned that Shelton rarely goes to red carpets, which made the date mean all the more to her.
“He never does red carpets, now that I know him,” she said. “That always melts me when I see it because it’s, like, such a moment for me. A good one.”
According to another attendee, the new couple were all over each other that night.
“They acted like giddy teenagers at a high school dance,” another guest at the party told People. “They were holding hands the whole night and didn’t leave each other’s sides. I don’t think either of them stopped smiling the entire time they were there.”
Blake Shelton shared how his relationship with Gwen Stefani developed
While filming The Voice, Shelton announced that he was ending his marriage to Miranda Lambert. Stefani seemed particularly moved by his announcement and asked to speak to him privately. She confided that she was also ending her marriage.
“I thought it was going to be another one of those things-are-going-to-be-OK talks,” he told Billboard. “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.’ That’s kind of how our friendship and bond started, that day.”
They continued to check in with each other and, soon, their relationship turned romantic.
“It went from that, to checking in on each other once a week through email — ‘This s*** happened to me, what happened to you?’ — to maybe three times a week, then every day, to ‘Hey, here’s my phone number if you ever want to text,’” he said. “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.”
They married in 2021
According to Stefani, it didn’t take long for them to start discussing marriage. They wanted to wait for their families to adjust to their relationship, though.
“So I think in a romantic way, when you fall in love so hard and so unexpectedly — and so late in your life — you think ‘I want to marry you!’ That’s the first romantic reaction, like, ‘Let’s get married,'” she said, per People. “So we always talked about it, of course, and I think that as the years were going by, it didn’t need to happen. There was a lot of healing to do.”
They married in Oklahoma on July 4, 2021.
