NASHVILLE — (CNN) The reigning king and queen of country music are splitting.
Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert announced Monday that they are divorcing after four years of marriage.
“This is not the future we envisioned,” the couple 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.”
The pair met in 2005, when Shelton was still married to his first wife, Kaynette Williams. He told People.com that he and Lambert met when they were selected to sing “You’re The Reason God Made Oklahoma” together at the CMT 100 Greatest Duets concert.
The chemistry was undeniable, according to Shelton.
“They paired me with Miranda, and we were on stage for rehearsal, and I don’t know, something just happened, and we both knew it,” he said.
For her part, Lambert told NBC’s “Dateline”, “I knew he was married.”
“I didn’t know what to do with it,” she said. “It was my first duet with some other country star, and I didn’t know if it was initial butterflies because of that. … I don’t know what it was. It was just this draw to each other.”
Shelton and Williams divorced in 2006, and he and Lambert became an item.
Both have highly successful music careers, but rumors of trouble in paradise have often followed them. Lambert has appeared as a mentor on the signing reality competition “The Voice,” on which her husband is a judge, and she dominated this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards while Shelton co-hosted the ceremony.
In 2014, the couple told CBS News that they didn’t like to be interviewed together because “We try so hard to keep people’s focus on what we do and not our marriage.”
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