Gwen Stefani opens up about when she first felt pulled toward Blake Shelton

July 7, 2015. It's a date permanently etched in Gwen Stefani's memory.

At the time, the life Stefani had painstakingly built over the last 13 years with then-husband, rock frontman Gavin Rossdale, had imploded. But as the wounded artist grappled to gather the pieces of herself and present a sanguine mosaic to her co-stars, fellow Voice judge Blake Shelton revealed that he, too, was broken.

Speaking to Harper's Bazaar, Stefani shares that she was huddled on set with Adam Levine and Pharrell Williams when Shelton announced his divorce from singer-songwriter Miranda Lambert: "There I was with my big secret, right? And that's when Blake was like, 'Everybody, before we go out there, I want to let everyone know that by the time this airs, I will be divorced.'"

"(I felt) exposed somehow," Stefani says. "But it was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time."

"And then it was just like everything flipped," she continues. "It went from horrible to, like, hopeful and, like, 'Wow, God, you just don't know what's gonna happen next.'"

What followed was a whirlwind romance, relayed in a fusillade of sentimental song lyrics, Instagram posts and interviews, in which Stefani and Shelton affirmed they were each other's saving graces.

Shelton recently gushed about Stefani during an interview with The Tennessean in May. "Sometimes when you think things couldn’t be worse and you can’t make it through another day, you never know what’s right around the corner that can save your life — that’s literally what happened for me," the Go Ahead and Break My Heart collaborator said. "The fact that we were able to be there for each other and relate to each other in that way like nobody else on earth. … There’s so much out there that is crazy, to have a shoulder and somebody that can be there for you and relate and understand, it literally saved my life."