Gwen Stefani checked in on the TODAY Show Thursday (Jan. 14) to talk about her engagement with Blake Shelton and the timing of their relationship.
While her comeback single “Let Me Reintroduce Myself” pays homage to Stefani’s iconic looks from her heyday, Carson Daly reminded her of when she first started dating her fellow The Voice coach five years ago and how Daly insisted their relationship was “not going to work.”
“Five years ago, when you started to date Blake, you’ll remember this, we went back to your house, your old house in L.A., and I sat you and Blake down in the kitchen,” the singing competition’s host began recalling to Stefani. “And I said, ‘You guys, pump the brakes. This is not good. This is not going to work.’ And I looked at Gwen, and I said, ‘You’re much, much too good for this guy. You’re smart. You’re intelligent. You’re one of my oldest friends. And then there’s Blake.’”
Shortly before Stefani and Shelton got together, the pop star had gotten a divorce from her husband of 13 years, Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, in 2015. She told Daly that it felt “weird” to experience happiness with someone again at a time that was “right around the corner after such devastation.”
“I feel just so excited that I have someone in my life that now I have a chance at happiness for a long time to come,” the “Hollaback Girl” singer mused. “It’s just a blessing, the whole thing, and it is a miracle. And yes, Carson, you witnessed that. It’s weird how things happen, and you just don’t see things that are right around the corner after such devastation, you know what I mean?”
But despite that “first romantic reaction” of wanting to get married right away after falling madly in love, Stefani said that feeling dissipated over the years and she only started to feel anxious right around her birthday last October, the same month Shelton popped the question.
“It’s funny because he basically had the ring, and it was right around my birthday. I was kind of getting a little bit anxious. I was, like, ‘Wait a minute. What are we doing? I don’t need to ever get married. What is happening?’’” she recalled. “Because I started having a little insecurity, and so it was right on time.”
Watch her TODAY Show interview below.