Shania Twain told PEOPLE magazine her husband Frédéric Thiébaud is her “forever true love,” saying, “This is the love I’m going to grow old with and it’s a beautiful feeling.”
Twain, 60, recently revealed why she believes her 15-year marriage has been a blessing for her.
She and Thiébaud tied the knot on January 1, 2011, in Rincón, Puerto Rico, after their former spouses had an affair with one another.
The “Party for Two” singer explained to PEOPLE, “I’m sure we’ll always have romance, but there’s a depth and a gratitude that I have about having this love.”
She elaborated on the uncommon bond they share.
“And if I [had] met Fred as a teenager, I do believe that he would have been my lifelong love even from then. It just takes sometimes years to find that person,” Twain quipped.
When asked about the qualities she treasures, Twain stated, “If you have a man that is really open and wants to keep the communication open, you’re blessed as a woman.”
In interviews over recent years, she’s spoken candidly about how she and Thiébaud found each other through shared devastation.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Twain revealed that it was Frédéric who first confronted her with the truth about their spouses. “Fred takes the blinders off, tells me what’s going on. I don’t believe him and I tell him that I think he is imagining things, delusional,” she said.
“It turns out it [the affair] was never going to end. So, Fred and I, we collapse and at some point, we just got to let it go,” Twain continued.
As their lives unraveled, something unexpected blossomed between them.
“And at that time, we found each other and it was really great to say there’s no hope and in knowing that I found out what a beautiful person he was,” Shania explained.
“I got to observe Fred going through the same thing I was and I admired how he handled it. That is where I fell in love with him, because he was so exemplary in every way,” Twain said in another interview.
She described their healing process to Ellen DeGeneres.
“We slowly became very, very good friends. We had many months of just trying to make sense of everything. Holding each other up was a very difficult time emotionally for both of us. And we really found something very beautiful in the end and unexpected,” Shania told Ellen DeGeneres.
“We slowly became very, very good friends,” Twain said. “We had many months of just trying to make sense of everything, holding each other up. It was a very difficult time emotionally for both of us. I would say he was probably stronger than I was. He was a tremendous support — we were a support to each other — and really found something beautiful in the end and unexpected.”
She contrasted how they each handled the betrayal when speaking to Dax Shepard.
“He was smarter about it and I was uncontrollably fragile over it, which I had never felt before ever, because I thought for once, I was stable,” she said.
Their bond transformed into romantic love as they leaned on each other.
“Thankfully, her close bond with Frédéric Thiébaud grew, but she didn’t want to act on it at first. ‘I rejected it initially,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t control Fred’s love for me and how easy he is to love.'”
“Frederic Nicolas Thiebaud has been a true gift to me as a compassionate, understanding friend and over time, an amazing love has blossomed from this precious friendship,” Shania wrote about their relationship.
“That is a really strong bond that builds over time, that is rare, that you don’t have in every relationship if you don’t have those deep scars in common,” Twain says of Thiébaud. “We were a big part of each other’s healing.”
Looking back at her initial resistance to remarriage, she revealed her surprise at falling in love again.
“When I got divorced I said, ‘I’m never getting married again.’ I was definitely one of those people that could have written a million songs about, ‘I’m never going to fall in love again.’ But Fred was such an undeniable love.”
In the viral moment that changed both their lives,
Twain separated from record producer Robert “Mutt” Lange in 2008 after learning that he had reportedly been having an affair with her close friend and assistant, Marie-Anne Thiébaud.
Shania turned to Marie-Anne for support, unaware that her best friend was the source of the marital rift.
The devastating truth surfaced when Frédéric uncovered concrete evidence of the affair, discovering hotel receipts and travel logs belonging to his wife and Lange.
“Fred and Mutt were good friends, and Marie-Anne and I were good friends,” Shania later told Oprah Winfrey.
Today, more than a decade into their marriage, Twain and Thiébaud remain devoted to each other and enjoy what she describes as a “second honeymoon phase.”
“We’re bonded now in a different way,” Twain says, noting they are now empty-nesters.
“I found peace a long time ago, and maybe peace is forgiveness, you know?” Twain says of moving on from Lange. “I’m able to have more appreciation for him again, not for what happened in our marriage but for all that he contributed to such a great part of my career and my life. We have a beautiful child from it. The resentment is gone.”