Shania Twain has shared the story of how she and her current husband, Frederic Thiebaud, found each other through a shared experience of infidelity. Twain revealed on the BBC Radio 4 program "Desert Island Discs" that she and Thiebaud connected as they dealt with the betrayal of their former spouses.
Twain, 60, separated from her first husband, music producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, in 2008. She initially struggled to believe reports that Lange was having an affair with her best friend and assistant, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. It was Marie-Anne Thiebaud's husband, Frederic "Fred" Thiebaud, a Swiss-born Nestle executive, who helped Twain confront the truth.
"Fred takes the blinders off, tells me what’s going on," Twain recounted. "I don’t believe him and I tell him that I think he is imagining things, delusional. 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."
She added, "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." Twain divorced Lange in 2010 and married Thiebaud a year later.
The Canadian-born singer, known for 1990s hits like "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" and "That Don’t Impress Me Much," has recently gained a new generation of fans. She performed at Glastonbury in 2024 and opened for Harry Styles during his concerts at Wembley Stadium. This resurgence in her career is particularly meaningful as Twain was unable to sing for a decade following a diagnosis of Lyme disease in 2003.
Twain described rediscovering her voice during a throat operation that required her to remain awake. "I have open throat surgery. They open your neck, you’re awake and they put a big clamp in your neck. They open it up and they push your larynx to the side, and they look at the nerve, and you phonate again. Sing for me! That’s what I had to do. I had to sing," she said.