Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert’s Decade of Highs and Lows: A Timeline

When Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert announced their divorce Monday, the news genuinely rattled country music fans — because not only was this Shelton and Lambert’s marriage, it was ours.

The relationship was one that fans were privy to from the get-go, from that very first smoldering performance together of “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” on CMT’s 100 Greatest Duets, a public display of affection that seemingly caught both artists by surprise — especially Shelton, who was married at the time. Still, the attraction between the Texas spitfire and the quick-witted Oklahoman was palpable, and when Shelton filed for divorce from his first wife in 2006, he and Lambert began their courtship in earnest.

Here was a couple with far more in common than any dating-site algorithm could match up. Both Shelton and Lambert were avid hunters, as comfortable in the woods in a tree stand as they were onstage. They were also inherently homebodies — after they eventually married in 2011, the singers settled in at their Oklahoma ranch, where Lambert would fry up hamburger steak and mushrooms for her husband while he took care of the property. It was an impressively normal lifestyle for two of music’s biggest stars, who transcended Nashville notoriety to become pop-culture icons. Shelton broke out as a bona fide TV star on The Voice, while Lambert furthered her artistry, claiming Grammy awards along the way and winning over non-country fans, who rallied behind her gunpowder-and-lead badass persona.

With such crossover fame, however, came the microscope of the tabloids. Seemingly every other week, another headline would appear alleging infidelity or, at least, love on the rocks. Both artists took to responding to the rumors via social media, with Shelton having the most smartass fun in discrediting them. “Wow!! @mirandalambert and I are so excited about our 100 million dollars!!!” he tweeted in 2013, after a report suggested a large sum of money was at stake in the rumored divorce. “Who knew you could make so much money just by divorcing?!!”

Surely, such constant scrutiny was difficult to bear, but the couple’s defiance and commitment to soldiering on — “Divorce is not an option,” Lambert told reporters backstage at the ACMs in 2013 — bolstered fans rooting for their continued happiness.

Which makes this week’s dissolution of their marriage so tragic. In these two human beings — for once, stars who truly were just like us — country fans could relate.

Here’s a look at how Shelton and Lambert fell in love, took Nashville by storm and, for a while anyway, provided country music with a modern-day George and Tammy romance.