Shania Twain spills on husband-swapping affair with ex-best friend

Country superstar Shania Twain has offered a rare insight into the shocking affair that ended her first marriage – and resulted in a surprise twist.

Shania Twain and husband Frédéric Thiébaud.

Shania Twain’s ex-husband and former BFF are still an item.

The country music superstar confirmed Robert “Mutt” Lange and Marie-Anne Thiébaud’s current relationship status 15 years after the couple’s affair sensationally broke up her marriage, reports the New York Post.

Armchair Expert co-hosts Dax Shepard and Monica Padman admitted in Monday’s episode of their podcast that they were “really nervous” to bring up Lange’s infamous infidelity while interviewing Twain, but the Man! I Feel Like a Woman singer reassured them that she is not “embarrass[ed]” by the 2008 scandal.

Twain with her first husband, Robert Lange, in 2000. Picture: Getty Images

Twain, 57, noted that she and Lange, 74 — to whom she was married for 14 years before their split — now only keep in touch in reference to their 21-year-old son, Eja.

“Mutt and I parent well together — for people who don’t talk to each other,” the Grammy winner explained. “We’ll just text.

“We both love our son so much, so we don’t play any games like that,” she continued. “We have the same priority; we share spaces for him. No nonsense there.”

After her scandalous divorce, Twain married Thiébaud’s ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, in 2011.

She married Frédéric Thiébaud in 2011. Picture: Getty Images

Shepard, 48, joked on Armchair Expert that the former couple played “musical chairs” by swapping partners, but Twain clarified that she “didn’t really know Fréd very well” before his ex-wife cheated with her husband.

After the betrayal, “it was a beautiful surprise” for the Come on Over songstress to see “how gracefully and graciously he was dealing with navigating the same pain.”

While Twain felt “fragile” over the duplicity, the businessman, 52, seemed “thoughtful.”

She noted, “Fréd’s so smart. This is one of the smartest people I know, [and] he didn’t know [about the affair] either. That helped me feel better.”

At the 2023 BRIT Awards last month. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Adding that “everyone gets what they deserve,” Twain gushed, “I got what I deserve. I got the greatest man on the planet.”

Although Twain has remained mostly tight-lipped about her headline-making failed marriage over the years, she did give some rare insight into her mindset in her July 2022 documentary, Not Just a Girl.

The Waking Up Dreaming performer compared the break-up to the “similarly intense” pain of losing her parents in the Netflix film.

Twain has only publicly spoken about Marie-Anne a handful of times, including in 2015 when she told Andy Cohen that she had a “total panic attack” running into her ex-friend.

“I just told her that she was a bad person,” she recalled at the time. “That’s all I could get out!”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was republished with permission