Best-selling music artist Shania Twain picked up the pieces following the collapse of her first marriage due to infidelity. She has since married a man whose ex-wife was her former husband’s mistress.
Twain wed her first husband music producer Robert Lange in December 1993 and they welcomed their son Eja eight years later in 2001. However, the couple’s marriage later crumbled, and they separated in May 2008.
Immediately after the duo decided to call it quits, it was alleged that Lange cheated on Twain with the couple’s longtime secretary Marie-Anne Thiébaud – who also happened to be the songwriter’s “best friend.”
Twain and Lange’s divorce was finalized in 2010 following 14 years of marriage. Around that time, she seemed to have moved on. The Canadian singer was spotted being cozy with Marie-Anne’s former husband Fredric Thiébaud and a source mentioned she appeared “happy.”
Twain candidly discussed the breakdown of her marriage with her ex-husband in an interview on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” saying she struggled with the betrayal.
Asked how she found out about the affair, Twain recalled it was during Easter time. The two families were spending the holidays together and after that period, Fredric, Marie-Anne’s husband at the time, called Twain.
He said he wanted to talk to her about his wife and suggested they meet up. Fredric explained that he had been waiting for a few weeks to tell her and that he hoped Lange and Marie-Anne would do it first.
However, he figured they had not done that and strongly felt that Twain needed to know what was going on between their spouses. That was when he broke the news to the “Honey, I’m Home” singer.
“Of course, I didn’t believe him, and I thought for sure he was making it up. I was, obviously, in denial on my part,” Twain admitted. Fredric then told her that he had proof that their spouses were having an affair, adding that he had been following it for a couple of weeks.
She remembered him saying, “‘I’ve got hotel bills and all kinds of details.'” Twain later recounted how she felt after hearing about her husband’s cheating in her book, “From This Moment On.”
She penned, “For the first week after finding out about the affair, I was ready to die. To go to bed forever and never wake up, or to hurt someone. I was ready to do something desperate, but in reality, there was nothing to do but to suffer through it.”
For Twain, her saving grace was the responsibility of caring for her son, who kept her going. The mother of one even acknowledged that it was because of her child that she wrote her book.
Twain has continued to open up about her painful divorce from Lange over the years. She reflected on their split during an interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast in 2023.
Twain said a lot of the things that she endured post the divorce should not have been so hard on her. The star wishes she should have been less naive about life’s ups and downs.
Moreover, the songstress revealed Fredric handled the news of their spouses’ affair much better than she did. She added that he was more considerate and smarter about it.
“I was uncontrollably fragile over it, which I had never felt before ever because I thought for once I was stable. […] So that really devastated me I think more than any other instability I’ve ever felt,” Twain expressed.
She found herself crying constantly amid her breakup from Lange and bathed five times a day. Twain ended up comforting herself by calling Marie-Anne a female anatomical epithet.
Speaking on how that made her feel, the Grammy Award winner said, “It was kind of cathartic. My emotions were so balled up inside me that it felt good to release.”
Twain also admitted that seeing her husband fall in love with her close friend negatively affected her self-esteem. She even sent Marie-Anne an email begging her to leave Lange, writing: “I don’t want life or love anymore… Why are you torturing me? Let it go. Pleeeeeaaaaaaasssseee!!!!!”
Twain was eventually able to move on from Lange and remarried with Fredric in January 2011. She spoke about how their romantic relationship developed, saying they gradually became good friends post their heartbreaks.
The pair spent months together trying to make sense of what happened and held each other up. It was an emotional period for them both. “I would say he was probably stronger through it than I was. He was a tremendous support. We were a support to each other, and really found something very beautiful in the end and unexpected,” said Twain.
The same year the couple walked down the aisle, the country star was asked how she knew that Fredric was the right partner for her. Twain said she had the chance to closely observe how he went through their similar heartbreaking situation and admired him for how he handled it.
“That is where I fell in love with him, because he was so exemplary in every way,” she explained. However, before reaching that point, Twain and the Swiss native had no romantic connection while married to their former spouses.
Although they all spent time together as couples, Fredric and the “Party for Two” singer were not even that close and did not have each other’s phone numbers.
Moreover, he was not involved in Twain and Lange’s lives that much because he was busy with work most of the time and traveled a lot. He only showed up for weekend dinners, among other things and that was it, said Twain.
In 2023, the award-winning star appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show” where she openly talked about trusting in relationships again. “I’m still too trusting. But I still get burned, all the time,” Twain admitted. She explained that is how she would rather be instead of being untrusting.
In addition to her love life struggles over the years, Twain has also had to battle health issues. She contracted Lyme disease in 2003 while horseback riding.
This caused her voice to change and fade and one doctor told her she had nerve damage as a result of the disease. Following two open-heart procedures she was able to sing again after being persuaded by her friends, Gladys Knight, and Lionel Richie, whose daughter Nicole Richie is now a mother of two.
Twain admitted she feared making a sound after undergoing surgery because she was uncertain of what was going to come out. “It did scare me, but I just had to take the leap and make a sound. And I was so excited about what came out,” she said about hearing her new voice for the first time.
The Queen of Country Pop returned to doing what she does best with the release of her album in six years, “Queen of Me” in 2023. This was followed by a seven-month tour of the same name.
It was Twain’s first tour in five years, and she did a great job vocally. “I feel like my voice is back. It’s different, but it’s strong,” she divulged in an interview.
After all that she has been through, Twain has learned self-acceptance. During a podcast interview in 2023, she mentioned the desire to be comfortable in her own skin.
The music star acknowledged that her perception needs to change instead of changing who she is as a person and what she looks like. Twain feels beautiful when she is all dressed up and when she is naked too.
This would not be the case had she not participated in a naked photoshoot. She figures that she may have been tired of judging herself all the time, hence it is where she got the courage to finally do it. Shania Twain emphasized that she would rather live in the moment instead of focusing on what she used to look like in her twenties.
