How Shania Twain, Frédéric Thiébaud Turned Betrayal Into a Love Story

But those marriages didn’t last forever and for always. In March 2008, not long after Shania confided in Marie-Anne that she felt herself drifting apart from her husband of 14 years, the “Come on Over” artist learned a secret that shook her world.

“My husband was having an affair with Marie-Anne,” she wrote in her 2011 memoir From This Moment On. “Marie-Anne my confidante, the same friend who’d comforted me over the phone only weeks before, expressing how absurd it was of me to have any such suspicions of my husband. The idea that she was the mistress, after all the confiding I’d done in her, had not even entered my mind.”

In fact, Shania said Frédéric was the one who told her weeks after he learned of the alleged affair himself.

“I thanked Fred for coming clean,” she continued, “and sparing me further humiliation by turning on the light.”

For his part, Mutt denied the affair allegations, telling People in May 2008 that his split from Shania was “just a growing apart, that’s all.” Echoing his denial, Marie-Anne later added to the outlet, “You cannot believe everything you read in the press.”

But while Mutt and Marie-Anne did begin dating, Shania had no plans of striking up a romance with Frédéric.

“Although I had known Frederic for about nine years, I had never really known him,” the Grammy winner wrote in her memoir. “I mean, he was my close friend’s husband. I thought he was a wonderful, considerate person, and anyone could see that he was an attentive husband and father, but we were friends by association only.”

However, they grew closer as they leaned on one another.

“It stands to reason that we supported each other during this time of our mutual betrayal, staying in touch, mostly by phone and email every couple of days, as I’d left for Canada at this point,” the Ontario-born musician added. “After all, who else could understand better what the other was going through?”

It wasn’t until December 2009—about three months after Shania returned to Switzerland—that she and Frédéric shared their first kiss, their kids egging them on after watching them dance beside a campfire.

“We were happy,” she wrote. “Relief came rushing through us, as the ice had been broken. Fred and I were surprised and relieved by our children’s encouragement to be ourselves in love, and from that moment on, the four of us began to form a reassembled family, building a nest, a new foundation, reconstructing our lives as a unit after the fall of the ones we’d lost.”

Still, Shania had her reservations. “Fred and I proceeded with caution, because we were both keenly aware that our mutual grief might be the main thing binding us together,” she added. “We also considered the dangers of confusing the children with a rebound romance. But it wasn’t.”

From this moment on, Shania and Frédéric started a new beginning—finalizing their divorces and then tying the knot on New Year’s Day in 2011.

“I am in love for the first time in my life,” he said in the 2011 OWN docuseries Why Not? With Shania Twain. “I know it because my heart feels different. Because when she enters a room, everything stops. My heart stops. I’m totally numb. It’s a beautiful thing. She did fall in love with me, and I’m just the happiest man on the planet.”

And his care did impress Shania much.

“I don’t feel like I’ve ever been loved this way before, no, no way,” the country music star added. “I have never been considered this way ever in my life before. I’ve never been supported this way in my life before. I have never been charmed this way in my life before. I’ve never been romanced this way in my life before. In all senses, I have never felt this way before.”

So though their love story wasn’t what she expected, man, she feels lucky they found each other.

It’s “twisted,” Shania told AARP The Magazine in 2020, “but so beautifully twisted.”

And as their relationship continues to go up, up up, she’s not letting their past bring her down.

“Do I hate my ex-husband for making a mistake? No,” she said on Great Company With Jamie Laing in 2024. “It’s his mistake, not my mistake. So sad for him that he made such a great mistake that he has to live with. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not my weight.”

To learn about more alleged cheating scandals that made headlines, read on.