Love is dead. Your childhood is over. Hush, hush, darling. Don’t let our days go by, glycerine. Yes, it’s really happening — alt-rock royalty Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale are splitting after 13 years of marriage.
As TMZ reported Monday night, Stefani and Rossdale simultaneously filed for divorce, both citing irreconcilable differences and requesting joint custody of their three children, Kingston, Zuma, and Apollo. In a statement, the couple said, “While the two of us have come to the mutual decision that we will no longer be partners in marriage, we remain partners in parenthood and are committed to jointly raising our three sons in a happy and healthy environment.”
Stefani and Rossdale met a full two decades ago, when her band No Doubt opened for his band Bush on a 1995 tour. (These days, her wealth reportedly exceeds his by $45 million.) They married — twice, actually, with weddings in London and LA — in 2002.
The tabloid press is all over the story already, of course. TMZ has followed up its original report with an anonymously sourced claim that the divorce was “a long time coming,” because Stefani believed Rossdale was cheating on her and wanted him to stop touring. (In case you hadn’t heard, Bush reunited in 2010 and has since released two albums.) People counters with another anonymous source calling the split “amicable” and claiming that Stefani’s “top priority is making sure her kids feel secure and comforted during the process.”
No matter what really transpired between Stefani and Rossdale, this is sad news for the couple and their children — and, to an infinitely lesser degree, the millions of ’90s kids who looked to them as a model of lasting love. (Seriously, though, please don’t do this with celebrities.)
Perhaps the only silver lining here is that, as Rossdale is now single, he’s free to reunite with Peter Robinson, aka Marilyn, the gender-bending performer he dated in the ’80s — who apparently hasn’t kissed anyone since.