Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert Are Getting Divorced

Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert, one of country music’s beloved couples, are getting divorced.

Warner Music Nashville has confirmed the news, as reported by the Associated Press.

“This is not the future we envisioned,” Shelton and Lambert’s representatives say in a statement to the AP. “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.”

TMZ reports that Shelton is the one who filed divorce documents in Oklahoma “a while ago,” and it’s expected that a judge will officially proclaim their marriage over as of Monday (July 20). The website reports that the two artists’ finances were split relatively easily, as they already had a prenup, and the couple’s properties are also being split. Shelton and Lambert own a ranch in Oklahoma as well as a home in Nashville; the “Sangria” singer will retain the ranch while his wife will get the family home in Music City. According to TMZ’s sources, Lambert has been moving her plethora of animals off the ranch in the past few days.

Shelton and Lambert tied the knot on May 14, 2011 — a year after he proposed to her in the woods near their home in Tishomongo, Okla. Sparks first flew when the two sang together in 2005 for the CMT 100 Greatest Duets special. They performed “You’re the Reason God Mad Oklahoma,” and though Shelton was married at the time, he immediately fell in love with the fiesty blonde.

“I’ve never had that kind of experience with anybody,” Shelton recalls. “I was a married guy, you know? Standing up there and singing with somebody and going, ‘Man, this shouldn’t be happening.’ Looking back on that, I was falling in love with her, right there on stage.”

“I knew he was married,” Lambert adds. “I didn’t know what to do with it. 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.”

The country couple has been through so much in their four years of marriage, including career triumphs, Shelton’s success on The Voice, big tours, award-winning albums and lots of trophies. There were also many tabloid rumors about the couple divorcing over the years, but they worked hard to deny all of them.

Marriage is tough, whether or not you’re a superstar, and Shelton and Lambert knew that. They were intimately involved in one another’s careers, and though they were often on separate tour buses on their separate road treks, Shelton once told The Boot “Miranda and I, our relationship is odd. But really, really, really tight. We’ve gotten to the point where we really lean on each other for a lot of things, and it surprises me with how much we’re involved with each other’s careers, probably to the point where it makes people that work with us uncomfortable.”

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