There are a lot of achy
breaky hearts in the country music industry—and for good reason!
While Billy Ray Cyrus has
been married to Tish for 23 years (happily, too, aside from a possibly Hannah
Montana-related hiccup in 2013), the "Achy Breaky Heart" singer
proves to be more the exception than the rule.
It makes sense, though,
doesn't it, that all those songs about lyin', cheatin' scoundrels and no-good
exes were somehow inspired by real-life events? Thank goodness we've still got
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, y'all, because some of these other country couples
and their drama have us about ready to go full-force Carrie Underwood
"Before He Cheats."
Beginning with Jason
Aldean... After photos of the "Dirt Road Anthem" singer kissing
Brittany Kerr (who was not his wife at the time) surfaced in 2012, the country
star came clean. In a heartfelt Facebook post, Aldean admitted he "had too
much to drink, let the party get out of hand and acted inappropriately at a
bar." He apologized to his wife, Jessica Ussery, "for embarrassing my
family and myself."
In the wake of this
incident and a handful of other well-documented rough patches, Aldean and
Ussery divorced in 2013 after 12 years of marriage. The "Tonight Looks
Good on You" singer revealed he was dating Kerr, and they announced their
engagement in September 2014. Six months later, the couple said "I
do" in a romantic wedding ceremony in Mexico.
Aldean, eager to put the past behind him, is no longer
open to discussing his infidelity. "It has been two years of this s--t—get
over it, already!" he said in a 2014 interview with Billboard. "And
then when I finally do get enough of it and say something, every newspaper
grabs it. And I'm not trying to get in the headlines—I'm just trying to get
people to stop running their mouths.
It's not always that easy to control the public
conversation, though. Take, LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian, who fell for each
other in early 2009 while filming the Lifetime movie Northern Lights. Their
not-well-hidden romance was quite the scandal because, as you may remember from
the tabloids, both Rimes and Cibrian were married to other people at the time.
Rimes' first husband Dean Sheremet didn't speak out
about her affair until 2015, but Brandi Glanville was famously vocal about
Cibrian's infidelity.
By October 2010, Cibrian's divorce from Glanville and
Rimes' from Sheremet had been finalized. The following month, the Northern
Lights co-stars were engaged. The pair said "I do" on April 22, 2011,
in a small ceremony in front of 40 guests, including Cibrian's sons from his
first marriage.
Rimes is grateful to be happily married to Cibrian, but
that's not to say doesn't struggle with what happened. "I don't like the
word regret," she told E! News in 2012. "I wish I handled it
differently because I wish I could have been better for me, for Brandi, for
Dean, for Eddie, for everyone else."
"I know, in this situation, it's going to take some
time," she admitted. "All I wish is that everyone that was hurt, that
we hurt, that I hurt, can be happy."
Another country star whose marriage fell apart publicly
is Josh Abbott: The Josh Abbott Band frontman went on a 2014 Twitter spree in
which he admitted to cheating on his wife of four years, Amanda Abbott, and
revealed his struggle with alcohol abuse.
In a series of since deleted tweets excerpted by (Taste
of Country), Abbott told fans he had "destroyed my marriage through
multiple problems, including: problems w/ alcohol abuse, infidelity, and
language." Although he mentioned "the temptations that we as artists
and celebrities" as an obstacle, Abbott acknowledged that he was
responsible for his own mistakes.
The musician and his wife separated following his
Twitter confession and later divorced. Abbott wrote about the painful split on
his band's 2015 album, Front Row Seat.
"We named the album 'Front Row Seat' because it's a
front row seat to our band and really it's a front row seat to this story of
love and divorce," he told Taste of Country. "I guess it's a story of
whatever would be the opposite of love. It's a story about my life."
Of course, any country music fan can tell you love
hurts—it's just that sometimes it's worth it.
Shania Twain's husband of 14 years, Robert
"Mutt" Lange, allegedly cheated with her close friend Marie-Anne
Thiébaud. Twain divorced Lange in 2008, and the country star bonded with
Frédéric Thiébaud, her former friend's ex-husband, over their heartache.
Twain and Thiébaud "had a good year of just
suffering together as friends," she later told Redbook. "And don't
forget I'd known him for many years before. So it was that, then another year
of falling in love. It didn't feel like a whirlwind at all, to be honest."
In a happy twist of fate, Twain and Thiébaud wed on Jan.
1, 2011. "Good for me, is all I can say," Twain told Redbook after
gushing about her hubby, adding that she's "loving every minute" of
life as Mrs. Thiébaud.
Sara Evans filed for divorce from Craig Shelske in 2006,
and she didn't just list "irreconcilable differences" as the reason
for the split. Evans accused Schelske of infidelity and verbal abuse (which he
adamantly denied). Schelske went on to accuse Evans of infidelity, and the
tawdry details of their legal back and forth played out very publicly.
Evans' divorce from Shelske was finalized in 2007, and
she married sports radio host Jay Barker in 2008. Evans stepped back from the
spotlight for several years to focus on raising her three children from her
marriage to Shelske and Barker's kids as well.
"The dynamics of a divorce and blended families are
there,"Evans said in a 2014 interview with SheKnows.com. "And I come
from divorce—my parents divorced when I was 12, so I totally understand what
they are going through and what they feel and their struggles, so I try to
compensate for those constantly."
And sometimes, marriage just isn't quite what you
thought.
Four months after Kenny Chesney and Renée Zellweger's
May 9, 2015 wedding, the Bridget Jones's Baby actress filed for an annulment
from the country star on the grounds of "fraud." Shortly afterwards,
Zellweger issued a statement clarifying that the term "fraud" was
"simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character."
This, however, didn't stop tabloid speculation over Chesney's sexual
orientation.
"It's not true. Period. Maybe I should have come
out and said, 'No, I'm not [gay],' but I didn't want to draw any more attention
to it," Chesney later told Anderson Cooper during an interview for 60
Minutes. "I didn't have to prove to anybody that I wasn't [gay]. I didn't
feel like I really did."
"The only fraud that was committed was me thinking
that I knew what it was like...that I really understood what it was like to be
married, and I really didn't," added Chesney.
The singer doesn't regret his marriage to Zellweger,
though. "Even though I'd sit here and say I wish we'd gotten divorced
instead of all that annulment stuff, and saved me a lot of public
humiliation...I still don't have any regrets," he told Cooper. "I loved
her, you know? And it was
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