Blake Shelton Calls Gwen Stefani Romance the ‘Biggest Head Scratcher’

When Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani started dating, few people expected their relationship to last, including Shelton. The “Hell Right” singer met Stefani while they were both coaching The Voice, but didn’t get to know each other until they were both going through their own divorces at the same time. With four years together, and no plans of ever splitting up, Shelton says being named PEOPLE‘s Sexiest Man Alive wasn’t nearly as surprising as his romance with Stefani.

“If you thought the PEOPLE magazine cover was shocking, mine and Gwen’s relationship is probably the biggest head-scratcher,” Shelton said on Martina McBride‘s Vocal Point podcast via PEOPLE.

What makes their romance even more surprising is that the two never interacted much during their first season together on The Voice, since Stefani had just given birth to her youngest son, Apollo.

“I’ll even say that she was, of all the coaches, the least that I had gotten to know the first season she was on the show because she had just had a baby, and I mean just had a baby,” Shelton recounted. “And so any time there was downtime, she was busy. She was gone, she was in her trailers, she was taking care of the baby. There was never those moments that usually happen on this show, where at the end of the day we’re sitting around out here at the couches and having a drink, talking, laughing.”

By 2015, in her second season, Stefani was in the middle of a divorce from Gavin Rossdale, while Shelton’s marriage to Miranda Lambert was also ending.

“A lot of life had happened and we’d been through a lot, and we bonded actually over that,” Shelton reflected, adding, “And it’s one of those things that, who knows? It had to have been meant to be.”

The couple is now so entrenched in each other’s lives that Stefani calls him a “good dad” to her three sons, and they have their own holiday traditions, which they will soon get to put into practice.

“She cooks a lot. She loves parties, like family-type parties where she can … [have] like festive foods and things like that,” Shelton boasted. “We do a thing every year. Every Christmas, this will be the fifth one coming up, I guess, fifth or fourth. I can’t remember anymore, but we look up some kind of a unique dish that we try, and we always do a practice run and then we do the real one for Christmas.”

Stefani will not be returning for the next season of The Voice, due to her ongoing residency in Las Vegas. The show airs on Monday and Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

Photo Credit: Getty / Kevin Mazur