Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney’s 4-Month Wedding: Romance Rejected
Renee ZellwegerA blink-and-you-miss-it wedding with a country singer Kenny Chesney It was so short-lived that even the actress sometimes forgets what happened – but at the time, it was one of the biggest celebrity dramas. Twenty years on, let’s take a look back at what really happened with Renée ‘n’ Kenny…
How It Began
It was at NBC’s Concert of Hope (Tsunami Helpline) in January 2005 that Zellweger, now 55, and Chesney, now 56, met for the first time – but this was not a chance meeting. I Bridget Jones The actress had already planned to pass a note to the country singer after praising him from afar. Chesney, on the other hand, had cited him as one of his top celebrities in a 2002 interview. The Tennesseansaying “Here is a village girl who is still in the world. You’ll never see him coming, then – wham! – here he is. And that makes her really sexy. And she seems like the kind of girl who can fit in and be at home anywhere.” His 1999 hit, “You Had Me From Hello,” was also rumored to have been inspired by seeing the actor deliver a similar line in 1996. Jerry Maguire.
The story, as told by an entertainment expert and veteran People magazine Editor-in-Chief Jess Caglesays that after the call, where Chesney was singing and Zellweger was answering the phones, he approached him and said “I hear you’re trying to pass me a note — don’t let the principal know!” and the two quickly began to get to know each other.
“They were still greeting each other,” Cagle said at the time. “At that point, they exchanged numbers and emails and started this kind of long-distance relationship that became something of a real romance.”
The first public hint of romance between the two 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 Did It Take?
This is the part that gets everyone talking.
After less than four months of dating, the couple married in May 2005 in an intimate ceremony at Chesney’s private estate in 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.
It all seemed like a dream, but less than four months later, Zellweger filed for annulment, citing “fraud” as the reason for the breakup.
How it ended
When news of the shocking breakup broke, speculation ran rampant about what “cheating” might mean, leading to wild speculation about Chesney’s sexuality (which he later addressed directly).
Zellweger issued a statement to clear things up, saying he wanted to “make it clear that the word ‘fraud’ as it appears in the documents is just official language and does not reflect Kenny’s character.” He added: “I would personally appreciate your support in avoiding any defamatory, hurtful, sensational or untrue conclusions and I greatly appreciate your understanding that we hope to hear this change as privately as possible.”
Sometimes relationships just don’t work out — just ask any celebrity couple who’s had a broken marriage. “He said that everything was fine and that my family and I were a good match. And he seemed to be growing up just like me. It was almost like an arranged marriage, I felt like, except we had a choice […]
What Each Says
Chesney responded to Zellweger’s statement with his own words. “This is an incredibly sad time,” he said. “I hope everyone can respect the privacy that I know Renée has already requested.”
But still the gossip continued, forcing the couple to release yet another statement – this one, together,and their respondents. They said: “The miscommunication of the purpose of their marriage at the beginning is the only reason for the annulment.” Renée and Kenny appreciate and respect each other and it’s sad that their different goals are preventing the success of this marriage.”
Both stars went downhill after that but in November 2005, two months after the breakup, Chesney praised his ex in a speech. Watching. “He and I fell in love like a couple of school kids,” he said. “I am happy to know that that is possible, that exists and we still really care about each other. It would be bad if I didn’t meet him. He is beautiful. I don’t want to stay here and go: ‘I’m sick.’ I am completely blessed, and I am grateful for it.”
What They Say Now
Now that more time has passed since the short, some might say doomed marriage, both people have felt able to talk about what really went down.
Sometimes America’s sweethearts get bitter. From Morgan Wallen to The Chicks, the biggest names in country music have been at the center of major controversies. Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer found themselves in hot water in the early 2000s after sharing their personal politics on the public stage. While doing the other side […]
“I think people need to live their lives the way they want, but I’m confident that I love girls,” Chesney said in 2009. Playboy interview. “I have a line of girls who can testify that I am not gay. In order for us to be dismissed, the legal documents would demand physical abuse, which was not true, or three or four other things that were also not true. The best thing we could put in there was fraud. So I said, ‘Okay, do it. Anything else’.”
In a 2010 interview, she gave a few more details — and it sounds like she wasn’t ready to get married. “I look at my life as a box,” he said. “So everything I put in — learn to play the guitar, put it in the box. The friends I made. I put that in the box, and my career grew. That box grew into a beautiful house… And you protect everything and every relationship with all the people who helped you build that house. “It was out of the box. [Renée’s] a sweet soul, no doubt about it, but I wasn’t ready yet…. This is the first time I’m talking about it, but it happened.”
For another Playboy interview, in 2015, Chesney reflected more on the turn of events, and the impact on his life. “Nothing good in my life came out of it, I can tell you that,” he said. “I didn’t know what true marriage meant. I used to commit to one thing – music – and I had to completely commit to the second thing, marriage. I didn’t know how. It was a scary time for me. I had never had any kind of attention from the paparazzi. It has gone from zero to the other extreme of the spectrum. I went to a concert and there were helicopters circling, trying to get a picture of me and him together. I thought it would always be like that. I just got scared. I did the only thing I could do: I ran. I pushed him away in every way—until I didn’t want to marry him anymore. It’s that simple. I still struggle with it. Was it the right thing to do or not? I still think about him every day. Every day I wonder if you are okay. I mean, you don’t just lose someone’s love.”
Recently, in the 2023 interview no BillboardChesney spoke about how his experience with Zellweger led him to pursue his private life. “One of the reasons why I am private is that my life is starting to change and people are starting to take care of me, the thing I had kept to myself was the deep knowledge of my life,” he said. “The good thing is that we were already playing arenas, and after that … I didn’t have social anxiety before that, and then you add our success and you add that to your life and you have less social anxiety. And now, we face the way the world is today and how everything is in society, and how information is transmitted – yes, you have to be crazy to want to be famous today. “
Some of country music’s best songs are about heartbreak — and the relationships that inspired it can be just as surprising. Shania Twain experienced that firsthand when her husband of 14 years, Robert “Mutt” Lange, had an affair with her former assistant, Marie-Anne Thiébaud, in May 2008. […]
Zellweger also spoke about the tumultuous time in her life, she said in a 2016 interview. Attorney that the speculation about Chesney’s sexuality really upset him. “It saddened me that somehow people were using that as a way to be cruel and call a gay person dirty, which has painful consequences,” she said. “Yes, there is a big problem as to why someone had to write a story. I’m an old gal who thinks it’s inappropriate to hang out on the lawn. I feel that it degrades a person’s dignity when you share personal things with strangers who make fun of you. I just don’t see any dignity in that.”
Zellweger added that she often forgets the marriage ever existed, saying, “It’s a big thing to forget, isn’t it?”
Important Relationship Steps
In retrospect, it seems like these two just fell in love and romance after admiring each other from afar – but forgot to figure out if they were compatible. Both in their mid-thirties at the time, getting married probably felt like the obvious thing to do.
An unexpected match! Ant Anstead continued to make headlines after his split from Christina Haack by starting A’s romance with Renée Zellweger. The Wheeler Dealers star was married to Haack for nearly two years before the couple announced their split via Instagram in September 2020. Nine months later, Us Weekly confirmed that […]
Two decades later, the two are in a long-term relationship — just not with each other. Chesney had been dating a model and dancer Mary Nolan since 2012 – and their relationship is extremely private – while Zellweger has a British TV star and a car expert. Ant Anstead from 2021. Interestingly, however, neither group ever remarried; did those few fateful months set them both up for the rest of their lives?
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