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Renee Zellweger‘s blink-and-you-miss-it wedding for a country singer Kenny Chesney so short-lived that even the actress herself sometimes forgot it happened – but at the time, it was one of the biggest celebrity dramas around. Twenty years later, let’s look back at what really happened to Renée ‘n’ Kenny…
How It Started
It was at NBC’s Concert of Hope (a tsunami relief telethon) in January 2005 that Zellweger, now 55, and Chesney, now 56, met for the first time – but this was no chance encounter. The Bridget Jones the actress had already planned to pass a note to the country star after admiring her from afar. Chesney, meanwhile, had cited it as one of his main celebrity crushes in a 2002 interview. The Tennesseansaying “This is a girl from the country who is still down to earth. You never see it coming, so – wham! – that’s it. And that makes her really, really sexy. Plus she seems like the kind of girl who could fit in and be at home anywhere.” His 1999 song, “You Had Me From Hello,” was also rumored to have been inspired by seeing the an actress delivering an almost identical line in the 1996’s. Jerry Maguire.
The story, as told by an entertainment expert and ex People Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Jess Caglesays that after the telethon, where Chesney was performing and Zellweger was answering phones, he approached her and said “I hear you’re trying to pass me a note – don’t let the boss find out! ” and the pair began to get to know each other immediately.
“They got each other from hello,” Cagle said at the time. “At that point, they exchanged numbers and emails and started this kind of long-distance relationship that became a real romantic thing.”
The first public hint of romance between the pair came in April, when Zellweger unexpectedly appeared on stage with Chesney at his show in Jacksonville, Florida, offering him a margarita and kissing him on the cheek.
How Long It Lasted
This is the part that got everyone talking.
After less than four months of dating, the couple married in May 2005 in an intimate ceremony at Chesney’s private estate on St.John in the US Virgin Islands. Zellweger wore a Carolina Herrera gown and was walked down the aisle by her father, with 35 close friends and family members in attendance.
It all seemed like a dream, but after less than four months, Zellweger filed for an annulment, citing “fraud” as the reason for the split.
How it ended
When news of the shocking breakup became public, speculation ran rampant about what “cheating” might mean, even leading to intrusive speculation about Chesney’s sexuality (which he later spoke directly about).
Zellweger released a statement to clear things up, saying she wanted to “clarify that the term ‘fraud’ as listed in the document is purely legal language and not a reflection of Kenny’s character.” He added: “We would personally be very grateful for your support in refraining from making derogatory, harmful, sensational or false conclusions and greatly appreciate your understanding that we hope to experience this transition as privately as possible.”
Sometimes relationships just don’t work out – just ask any famous couple who’s had their marriage annulled. “He said all the right things and I and the families were a good fit. And he seemed to grow up like me. It was almost like an arranged marriage, I felt, except we chose (…)
What They Said About Each Other
Chesney responded to Zellweger’s statement with his own words. “This is a very sad time,” he said. “I hope everyone can respect the privacy I know Renée has already asked for.”
But the gossip continued to swirl, forcing the couple to issue yet another statement – this one, together, and through their representatives. They said: “The miscommunication of the purpose of their marriage at the beginning is the sole reason for this annulment. Renée and Kenny value and respect each other and are saddened that their different goals are preventing the success of this marriage.”
The two stars were generally low in the immediate aftermath but in November 2005, two months after the annulment, Chesney was praising his former member in an interview on The Scene. “She and I fell in love as a couple of school children,” he said. “I’m glad to know that that can happen, that that exists and that we still care for each other. It would have been a bad thing if I hadn’t met her. She is wonderful. I don’t want to sit here and go: ‘Poor me.’ I’m absolutely blessed, and I’m grateful for it.”
What They’re Saying Now
Now that more time has passed since the brief, some may say a doomed marriage, both sides have felt more able to talk about what really went down.
Sometimes America’s sweets go sour. From Morgan Wallen to The Chicks, country music’s biggest names have been at the center of some major controversies. Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer found themselves in hot water in the early 2000s after sharing their personal politics on a public platform. When performing across the (…)
“I think people need to live their lives the way they want, but I’m pretty confident in the fact that I love women,” Chesney said in a 2009 report. Playboy an interview. “I have a long line of women who could testify that I am not gay. In order for us to get an annulment, the legal papers could allege either physical abuse, which was not true, or three or four other things that were also not true. The best we could put in was deception. So I said, ‘Okay, do it. Whatever’.”
In an interview in 2010, he gave a few more details – and it sounded like he wasn’t ready for marriage. “I look at my life as a box,” he said. “So everything I put in – learn how to play guitar, put that in the box. The friends I made. I put that in the box, and my career grew. That box grew into this great house… And you protect everything and all the relationships and all the people who helped you build that house. “It was out of the box. (Renée) a sweet soul, no doubt, but I wasn’t ready…. It’s the first time I’ve really talked about it, but that’s what happened.”
In another Playboy interview, in 2015, Chesney was even more reflective about the turn of events, and the impact on his life. “Nothing positive at all in my life came from it, I can tell you that,” he said. “I had no idea what true marriage meant. I was so used to committing to one thing — music — and then I had to commit completely to a second thing, which was marriage. I didn’t know how. It was a scary moment for me. I had never really had any kind of attention from the paparazzi. It went from zero to the complete other end of the spectrum. I’d go to a concert and helicopters would be circling, trying to get a picture of me and her together. I thought it would be like that all the time. I just completely panicked. I did the only thing I knew how to do: I ran. I pushed her away, in every possible way – to the point where I didn’t want to be married to her anymore. It’s that simple. I still struggle with it. Is that the right thing to do or not? I still think about her every day. Every day I wonder if she’s okay. I mean, you don’t just fall out of love with someone.”
More recently, in interview in 2023 with Notice boardChesney talked about how his experience with Zellweger had made him keep his life more private. “One of the reasons I’m so private is when my life started to change and people started to care on a different level, the only thing I could keep to myself was the personal details of my life,” she said. “What’s interesting is that we’re already playing stadiums, and after that … I didn’t have social anxiety before that, then you add our success and then you add that to your life and you have a little social anxiety. And now, dealing with the way the world is today and how social everything is, and how information is transmitted – yes, you’d have to be crazy to want to be famous today. “
Some of country music’s greatest songs are about heartbreak — and the relationships that inspired them can be just as dramatic. Shania Twain learned that firsthand when her husband of 14 years, Robert “Mutt” Lange, had an affair with her former personal assistant, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, in May 2008. The pair called it quits in follow (…)
Zellweger has also spoken about the turbulent period of her life, and said in an interview in 2016 with The Advocate that the speculation about Chesney’s sexuality upset her greatly. “It made me sad that people somehow use that as a way to be cruel and call someone gay derogatory, which has dire consequences,” he said. “Of course, there is the bigger picture problem of why anyone had to create a story at all. I’m an old fashioned gal who doesn’t feel it’s appropriate to hang your laundry on the lawn. I feel like you devalue yourself as a human being when you share very personal things with a bajillion strangers who make fun of you. I don’t see any dignity in that.”
Zellweger added that she often forgets the wedding ever happened, saying “It’s a pretty big thing to forget, isn’t it?”
Key Relationship Takeaway Shops
In retrospect, it seems as if these two were just consumed with romance and the passion of falling in love after admiring each other from afar – but forgot to find out if they were compatible. Both in their mid-thirties at the time, getting married probably felt like the obvious thing to do.
A surprise game! Ant Anstead continued to make headlines after his split from Christina Haack by sparking an A-list romance with Renée Zellweger. The Wheeler Dealers star was previously married to Haack for nearly two years before the pair announced their separation via Instagram in September 2020. Nine months later, Us Weekly confirmed that the (…)
Two decades later, the two are in long-term relationships – just not with each other. Chesney has dated a model and dancer Mary Nolan since 2012 – and their relationship is extremely private – while Zellweger has been with the British TV star and motoring expert Ant Anstead since 2021. Interestingly, though, neither party has ever married yet; did those disastrous few months set them back for life?
