This is pretty cheeseball, but I adore the way Blake Shelton loves being a stepfather. It adds to his appeal, and it’s a wonderful example, I think, for other men. There are a lot of single moms and divorced moms out there, and may their lives be blessed with men who adore their children as much as Blake Shelton adores his stepsons. It’s been that way from the start of his relationship with Gwen too – soon after they got together, she was bringing the boys to Oklahoma, and he was providing them with a different kind of life than the way they live in LA. Zuma, Kingston and Apollo seem to adore Blake right back. Obviously, Blake and Gwen got married last year and everything seems to be going along swimmingly. Blake talked about fatherhood and more in a lengthy new interview with Country Countdown USA:
He’s prepared to take more of a step away from music: “What I’ve been looking forward to doing for the last four or five years is eyeing that timeline, that part of my career, where I just need to start stripping some things away. You gotta get some life in there, and marrying Gwen, I’ve married into a family. She’s got three boys … and all of a sudden you go, there’s other stuff.”
Choosing to get involved with a mother of three: “I think Gwen thought, when we first started seeing each other, that it was just gonna be a moment in time because of that,” he said, alluding to her concern about whether he would want her sons in his life. But Shelton said he didn’t think twice about making a commitment to the boys — and he did so because he had such a fine example in his own father, who married his mother when she already had a baby, his brother, Richie. “He took Richie on and raised him from the time he was 1 year old, and my brother never thought of my dad as anything other than his dad… The example that my dad set for me was that [child] was not even a consideration [in a romantic partnership]. You got three boys? Awesome! My dad did it. My dad raised me. I could do this. I didn’t know what I was signing up for, but I was all about signing up for it. And every day I’ve fallen in love with the boys as much as I do with Gwen.”
Bringing the boys to his 1,300-acre ranch near Tishomingo: “The two of them [the older boys] were like, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ I go, ‘Go out that door and don’t come back till you’re too tired to go any further.’ Well, they can’t even imagine just going down to the creek with a net or turning over rocks or getting on a buggy and driving around.” Today, Shelton said, his ranch has become “like Disneyland” for all three of his stepsons. He shared that he’s taught them how to fish, but he added, the boys have other favorite pursuits: “When it comes to burning things and starting fires and throwing hatchets, you better get out of the way!”
On Gwen’s faith: “I think honestly, looking back, that under the circumstances that Gwen and I fell in love with each other and got together was all the proof I needed. She has such a strong faith in God. I mean, if Gwen was sitting here right now, she would go ‘God’” — Shelton raised one hand high over his head — and then ‘everything else.’” He lowered the other hand toward the floor. “Just watching her and learning from her and learning how she thinks and how she treats people and how she just operates in her life, naturally I start seeing the God in everything, because she does.”
Gwen strengthened his relationships with his family: Shelton said his wife also has tightened the bonds with his sister, mother and stepfather. (Shelton lost his father in 2012.) “She’s got her arms around all of them,” he said, “and I never experienced that with anybody really, because that’s a lot to take on, and family’s first for Gwen.”
Gwen cooks: “Gwen’s Italian. She’s other things, too, but she really leans into the Italian part of her blood, and that comes with lots and lots and lots of family gatherings and lots of food. I mean, there’s a reason that my chin looks like a f—ing stork, and I’m OK with it!”
[From Hello & People]
It strikes me that Gwen and Blake must have been so exotic to each other. Gwen, the California girl who is also from a tight-knit, Catholic, Italian family. Blake, the Oklahoma redneck with two divorces under his belt and a lot of family mess. She’s blonde hair and red lipstick, he’s flannel shirts and neckbeards. But it works, and I think Blake’s devotion to Gwen and her sons is a huge reason why they work so well together. Anyway, I came away from this kind of moved? (Also: it’s so funny to me that all of this is probably driving Gavin Rossdale up the wall.)
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.
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