Kelly Clarkson Referred to Husband Brandon Blackstock as ‘Partner in Crime’ Before Divorce Filing

Singer Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock’s split came as a surprise as just weeks before, Clarkson called Blackstock her “partner in crime.” Clarkson filed for divorce in Los Angeles on June 4, following almost seven years of marriage. The couple, who tied the knot in October 2013, are parents to 5-year-old daughter River and 4-year-old son Remington. Clarkson was also step-mother to Bradstock’s teen son and daughter from a previous marriage.

Last month, Clarkson gushed about her relationship with Bradstock in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. She praised him for serving as her “lighting technician and audio visual technician” while she filmed The Kelly Clarkson Show from their Montana ranch. “He’s a director, and he’s also playing cowboy on our ranch. He’s got his hands full. We both definitely have our hands full,” she said at the time. “Brandon and I are hustling, definitely, around the ranch, trying to make it happen. And I 100 percent, none of this would be happening without my partner in crime.”

After news broke of the divorce Thursday, a source told ET the couple split after they realized their relationship “hadn’t been working for a while.” The couple is continuously working together, which became a point of “contention” in the relationship. Clarkson also wanted more children, but Bradstock did not. A second source told the outlet that most of the Kelly Clarkson Show staff was “in the dark” about the divorce, and “everybody” loves Bradstock. The source said he is “integral” to the show, and he is a “hands-on decision-maker, not just Kelly’s manager-husband.”

Clarkson and Blackstock first met in 2006 and reunited in 2012 after Blackstock’s first divorce. They married a year later and had been quarantining together in Montana with their children during the coronavirus pandemic. In her divorce filing, Clarkson cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their split and asked for joint legal and physical custody of their children. She also asked the court to enforce their prenuptial agreement and to change her legal last name back to Clarkson.

During their marriage, Clarkson often pulled the curtain back, even discussing their sex life. “This isn’t a downer to anybody I dated before him, but I’m just going to be real: I never felt like, honesty, sexually attracted to anybody before him,” she once said in 2017, reports PEOPLE. “And I’m not downing my exes. You know, everybody’s different. But there was something about him.”