Culture

Shania Twain's First Husband Cheated On Her, And Then She Married The Ex-Husband Of The Woman He Cheated With

Shania Twain delivered some of the most popular hits in the 1990s, such as "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" and "You're Still the One." She opened up about her personal life in a recent interview, revealing that she married the ex-husband of the woman her first husband cheated with.

By Gina Florio1 min read
shania twain
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Shania Twain's upbringing was anything but easy. She was born Eileen Regina Edwards and she wasn't born into a family of means. Her mother married Jerry Twain when she was four years old and she took his last name. However, their marriage was abusive and they broke up when she was a teenager. The two later got back together but they both died suddenly in a car accident in 1987. She was only 22 years old and she was left in charge of her three younger siblings. Shania tells Bustle that this prepared her for the music industry, and by the time she got to Nashville, she wasn't somebody who could be pushed around.

Shania Twain's First Husband Cheated on Her, and Then She Married the Ex-Husband of the Woman He Cheated With

In December 1993, Shania married a producer named Mutt Lange. They were a successful team that sold many records and made a lot of money together, but it all fell apart in 2008 when she found out that he was having an affair with her best friend.

“When I lost Mutt,” she said in her Netflix documentary called Not Just a Girl, “the grief of that was similarly intense to losing my parents. It was like a death — a permanent end to so many facets of my life.”

Shortly after that, she dealt with the loss of her voice, which was one of the biggest challenges in her life. She was suffering from dysphonia, when the vocal cords seize up. She decided to get open-throat surgery, and it helped her recover her voice fully.

Perhaps the strangest part of her story, though, is when she fell in love with and married Frédéric Thiébaud, who is the ex-husband of her best friend—the one with whom her first husband cheated. They fell in love after helping each other work through their heartbreak. The two live in Switzerland together with Thiébaud's daughter. Shania floats back and forth between Switzerland and Las Vegas, where she has her second residency.

She says she's very content with the place her life is in at the moment. Even though she has always battled with fear and insecurities, like anyone else, "these are things that are not allowed to get in the way of my dreams and my forward motion.”