Kenny Chesney
explains why the word fraud was used on the
document filed by Renee Zellweger to annul their
marriage and denies the gay rumors it sparked in an
interview to air Sunday on CBS's 60 Minutes.
''It's not true.
Period. Maybe I should have come out and said, 'No, I'm
not [gay],' but I didn't want to draw any more attention to
it,'' the 38-year-old country singer says. ''I didn't
have to prove to anybody that I wasn't [gay]. I didn't
feel like I really did.''
Zellweger and
Chesney were married on the Caribbean island of St. John in
the U.S. Virgin Islands in May 2005. It was the first
marriage for both. Four months later, Zellweger listed
''fraud'' as the reason she was seeking an annulment.
An annulment is a
judicial declaration that a marriage never legally
existed.
In California, an
annulment may be granted when either party in the
marriage is under 18, of unsound mind, bound to a previous
marriage, or if the consent to marry was obtained by
fraud or force.
The Oscar-winning
actress later issued a statement saying the term
''fraud'' was ''simply legal language and not a reflection
of Kenny's character.''
''We thought the
least harmful [stated reason] was fraud because it [is]
kind of broad...doesn't specify,'' Chesney says. ''And
boy...we were wrong.''
''The only fraud
that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it
was like...that I really understood what it was like to be
married, and I really didn't,'' he says.
Chesney, who is
set to go on tour this summer, says he has no regrets.
''Not at all. Not
one bit,'' he says. ''Even though I'd sit here and say
I wish we'd gotten divorced instead of all that annulment
stuff, and saved me a lot of public humiliation.... I
still don't have any regrets. I loved her, you know?
And it was real.''
Zellweger, 37,
won an Oscar for 2003's Cold Mountain. (AP)