Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton: A Relationship Timeline

Once upon a time, Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton were one of country music’s biggest couples, penning songs together, walking arm-in-arm on red carpets and gushing about each other to the press.

The two began dating back in 2006, got engaged in 2010 and married the next year in a rustic chic ceremony that combined their country lifestyle with a little bit of glamour. Ultimately, their burgeoning careers took a toll on their relationship, and the couple announced their split in 2015.

While both Lambert and Shelton are now happily with other people, scroll through for a look back at the country stars’ relationship.

The meeting

Shelton was still married to first wife Kaynette Gern when Lambert fell for him while they were performing for the televised CMT 100 Greatest Duets Concert in 2005. The pair sang “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” together for the special.

“I knew he was married,” Lambert said on Dateline in 2011, via E! News. “I had seen their wedding picture in Country Weekly. I knew better, like, this is off limits. My parents are private investigators for God’s sake. I’ve seen this my whole life — affairs. Of all people to know better, I know better than this.”

“I’ve never had that kind of experience with anybody,” Shelton said of performing with Lambert in an interview with VH1’s Behind the Music in 2011. “I was a married guy, you know? Standing up there and singing with somebody and going, ‘Man, this shouldn’t be happening.’ Looking back on that, I was falling in love with her, right there on stage.”

Officially dating

Shelton filed for divorce from Gern in 2006 and officially began dating Lambert. While the pair had previously admitted that being in a relationship with a fellow country artist wasn’t the easiest thing, they asserted that they wanted to make it work.

“Miranda and I have a very interesting relationship,” Shelton told the Associated Press in 2007. “She can get so mad at me that she just wants to punch me in the face, and we’ll say that’s it. Then, 30 minutes later we’re calling each other and acting like it never happened. I think it’s that we’re both artists, and if I want to see her or she wants to see me, sometimes it just doesn’t work out and it’s frustrating.

He continued, “But I think she’s somebody that I’m going to have in my life a long time. She’s one of those few people you meet and have a connection with and you don’t really fully understand it, but you know it’s a pretty big deal.”

The engagement

Shelton proposed in May 2010 in the woods near Lambert’s home in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

“He called my dad and got his blessing first,” Lambert told PEOPLE. “That was so Southern and old-school and perfect.” 

“We had a couple of Bacardi and Diet Sprites – in a Solo cup!” she added of the post-engagement celebration. “I’m just excited to be married because I want to tell Blake I really can love him the rest of my life and be happy and make him happy.”

The wedding

The pair tied the knot in 2011 at Don Strange Ranch in Lambert’s home state of Texas. PEOPLE reported that guests included famous friends like Kelly Clarkson, Reba McEntire, Dierks Bentley, Hillary Scott, Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley, and the decor was arranged by Junk Gypsies to create a rustic-chic vibe. Lambert wore her mom’s wedding dress and bagged the venison served at the wedding herself, while Shelton performed a song he wrote for his new bride.

“The pastor talked about placing Miranda above everything-he said, ‘Blake, you need to place her above hunting,’” Lambert’s mom, Bev, told PEOPLE of the ceremony. “Blake just gave him a look and hung his head down. It was such a classic Blake moment, and people had a chance to laugh.”

“Blake was staring so hard at Miranda when he was saying his vows,” she added. “He said it like he meant it. He wasn’t stumbling around or being funny. And Miranda really cried.”

Making it work

In 2011, Shelton took a job as a coach on The Voice, which meant he began spending a significant amount of time in California. To attempt to alleviate the pain of long-distance, the couple implemented a rule to never spend more than two weeks apart, which Shelton admitted fell mostly on Lambert, as he couldn’t feasibly leave the show’s set very often.

“If it wasn’t for her we probably wouldn’t be able to keep that promise because you can’t just up and leave a live show, you know, and because she’s mostly a touring country artist and that’s where her heart and soul is it’s easier for her in between tour dates to jump on an airplane and come out and see me and she’s been really good about doing that, and I thank God because that’s what keeps me going is when she comes out here,” he said in an interview according to E! News.

Private life

Before their split, Lambert discussed the need for privacy in her relationship in a 60 Minutes interview that aired in November 2014, noting that while the pair does share so much of their lives, they still need some privacy for themselves.

“We feel like we’re very honest with who we are and our relationship,” she said, according to E! News. “We’ve kinda told the good, the bad, the ugly as our relationship has progressed from the beginning till now. And people dig anyway and they make up lies, so I feel like, we don’t really hold back, because if you hold back they’re going to dig anyway so might as well just tell it.

She continued, “The only private thing we have is our home and, if we don’t protect that, then we have nothing. We have to have something that’s just for us. At some point you just have to go ‘all right, this is it, this is our line, you know.’ We have our one little area of the world that no one can come into.”

The rumors

Due to the intense public scrutiny on the pair’s relationship, rumors were constantly cropping up in the last few years of Shelton and Lambert’s marriage alleging things were on the rocks, including a report in 2013 that Shelton was involved with singer Cady Groves.

“[I tell Miranda], ‘I have nothing to hide from you.’ That’s always been our policy: ‘Here’s my phone. Go through it,’” Shelton told PEOPLE in 2013. “That’s really the kind of trust we have. There are no secrets. [I’ll say,] ‘Go dig through my drawers or my computer if you feel like you need to.’ And that’s been a really good thing, because I don’t want her to ever have any doubts.”

The duo continually denied the rumors, both via humor on social media and seriously in interviews — in 2013, Lambert told reporters backstage at the ACM Awards that “divorce is not an option” — but ultimately, the speculation came true.

The divorce

Shelton and Lambert announced their divorce in 2015.

“This is not the future we envisioned,” the couples’ representatives told Us Weekly in a statement. “And it is with heavy hearts that we move forward separately. We are real people, with real lives, with real families, friends and colleagues. Therefore, we kindly ask for privacy and compassion concerning this very personal matter.”

In 2015, Shelton began dating Gwen Stefani after meeting on the set of The Voice, and the couple is still together. Lambert dated musician Anderson East before being linked to musician Evan Felker, and in February 2019, she revealed that she had married police officer Brendan McLoughlin.

Photo Credit: Getty / Christopher Polk/ACMA2011