8 Strict Rules Gwen Stefani & Blake Shelton Follow In Their Marriage
This country couple gets along really well thanks to these rules!
Joe Seer / Shutterstock / Instagram When “No Doubt” front woman Gwen Stefani, 54, met "God's Country" singer Blake Shelton, 47, during the recording of The Voice in 2014, no one would have thought that they would end up dating for six years and get married in July of 2021.
However, the pair of musical artists fit together perfectly and have blessed their fans with adorable selfies and interviews regarding their relationship over the years. On October 19, Shelton gave a speech during Stefani's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony that brought his wife to tears.
“The first time that I ever met Gwen was in 2014. She wasn’t like any other famous person that I had ever met before. She drove herself to work in a black minivan with car seats in it," the country music star said as he started the speech about the love of his life.
The couple's marriage seems as strong as ever, and there are specific ways they keep their love alive.
The eight rules that Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton follow in their marriage.
1. Confide and rely on each other.
Very early on in their relationship, they learned the importance of being able to rely on each other whenever something gets them down. When they met in 2014, they were both still married to their previous partners, Stefani to rock musician Gavin Rossdale and Shelton to fellow country singer Miranda Lambert.
Coincidentally, they both went through their divorces at the same time and bonded over the process.
Bonding over their divorces is largely what brought the pair together, and so they continued to rely on each other for support over the years.
2. Keep a healthy competition against each other.
On the reality singing competition, The Voice, a line of coaches compete to ensure that their artists win the final competition, crowning them as the winner. Since Shelton and Stefani were two of the four coaches, things often got pretty heated.
"I love it when she's here," he tells E! Online of going up against Stefani on the show. "She brings a very complicated element of competition for me in particular."
"But I love that. I love the challenge. Just knowing that she's there and she has my back is pretty cool."
3. Don’t separate your work from your personal life.
As a three-time Grammy Award-winning artist who is currently working on her 5th studio album, and a near-equally decorated country singer, it would be a shame not to put those powers to good use.
The pair have recorded four duets together, “Go Ahead and Break My Heart,” “You Make it Feel Like Christmas,” “Happy Anywhere,” and “Nobody But You.”
During an interview with Chelsea Handler, Stefani revealed what the process of writing "You Make It Feel Like Christmas" alongside her husband was like.
"Like, it's crazy to me, like he's so talented and he doesn't really write that often," she said, adding to her excitement when she was able to write the song with him.
4. Keep the family close.
In her previous marriage to Rossdale, Stefani had three children — three sons named Kingston, 17, Zuma, 15, and Apollo, 9. During an interview with PEOPLE, Shelton alluded that Stefani didn’t think their relationship would last because of them.
"I think Gwen thought, when we first started seeing each other, that it was just gonna be a moment in time because of that," he said, but he has explained before that the complete opposite would be the case in an interview with KFROG.
"I have a stepfather in my life who is one of my heroes. I love my stepfather and I look up to him and he's like a father to me,” he said, adding later that "I can't imagine my life without these kids now."
5. The best gift is the gift of giving — and Blake Shelton has it.
For her birthday, just a year after they started dating, Shelton gifted her a horse that she named “Halo” and introduced as her “new bunny.”
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Shelton revealed his reason for giving the gift. "Gwen, she loves riding and she loves horses,” he explained. “It's actually so funny that people are so shocked by that, but if you can name me one girl on the planet that doesn't love horses or just think that they are beautiful..."
For Valentine's Day in 2017, Shelton appeared with another gift, this time in the form of a clip from The Voice that was aired during her interview on the TODAY Show.
"Gwen, I got this to show you how much I care about you,” he said in the clip, holding up a teddy bear. She laughed and exclaimed, “He's a dork, it's so funny!"
6. Create a lot of “first” memories together.
During quarantine, Stefani and Shelton spent a lot of their time doing exactly what everyone else was doing — learning how to do something new. “This summer during quarantine, I learned how to make jam," Shelton revealed in a video for The Voice that explains what the coaches were up to during the lockdown.
"We did do a lot of fun stuff," shared Stefani. "We did a lot of cooking. I learned how to make sourdough bread like everybody else; it took me like a month to get the starter right.”
Aside from all the cooking, they did a ton of other things together too. “We did so much stuff. We built a garden. We planted zinnias. I mean, we planted thousands of zinnia flowers,” she said. “It was a lot of stuff that you dream about doing that you never have time to do."
Stefani emphasized that their time together was “magical” since they never "have that much solid time together."
7. Be each other’s best friend.
In 2019, Stefani discussed her return to The Voice with Zane Lowe for Apple Music and talked about what it would be like working alongside Shelton, explaining that she was excited. "I mean, Blake's my best friend, so I get to hang out with him at work which is weird,” she said. “We tell each other everything. I don't want to do anything without him. He's my homie."
For Shelton’s birthday in 2020, Stefani doubled down on Instagram by sharing a cute photo of the couple with a caption that read “thank u for being my best friend.”
8. Shelton’s marriage and stepsons come first.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Shelton revealed that he was entering a “new phase” in his life that shifted his priorities around a little ever since tying the knot with his wife a little over a year ago.
"Look, I love music and I love The Voice,” he said. “I love all the cool things I get to do with my job, but those things all take a backseat now to Gwen and the kids and it’s just a new phase of my life.”
He wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t giving up on music and even thanked his label for giving him the opportunity to do what he wanted. "I’m having fun putting out songs when I feel like it and luckily the record label allows me to do that," he shares. "They always support it when I do it and my stupid ideas of doing a '90s country video — they're always on board and because of that, we have a 'God's Country' once in a while or a 'Happy Anywhere.'"
For now, his focus is on his wife and his stepsons, but he’ll never let go of the music until “they fire me.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.