Singer Jewel and Kevin Costner first sparked romance rumours back in December when they were snapped getting cosy at a fundraiser for the singer’s Inspiring Children Foundation while on Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands.
“They check a lot of boxes for each other,” a source told Us Weekly at the time of the pair’s “organic” connection that occurred around seven months after Costner’s divorce from his second wife, Christine Baumgartner.
“The consensus is that he’s found a real keeper in Jewel and that this has the makings of something that could be very special.”
Asked about her relationship with the Yellowstone actor, 69, Jewel, who turns 50 on May 23, coyly told People magazine that her happiness doesn’t depend on a man.
“I’ve found love, and I’m not talking about Kevin’s,” she said. “I’m so happy, irrelevant of a man. It has nothing to do with being in a relationship or not being in one.”
The comments came just weeks after Elle magazine asked the singer/songwriter about their relationship.
She admitted, “He’s a great person … the public fascination is intense for sure.”
Jewel has had to figure out how to handle interest in her personal life since her debut album, Pieces of You, was released in 1995 and she caught actor Sean Penn’s attention with her first TV appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
The pair had a short-lived romance, with Penn following her on the road and tasking her with writing a song called ‘Emily’ for his 1995 film, The Crossing Guard.
“I was determined not to be ‘discovered’ because I was dating someone in the public eye,” she shared in her 2015 memoir Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story.
“Even when I was dating Sean really early on, nobody knew that I was dating him. I wouldn’t do a red carpet with him. I was just very prideful.”
Jewel went on to tie the knot with former rodeo cowboy Ty Murray in 2008 and gave birth to their son Kase in 2011, before the couple announced their divorce in 2014.
“It reminded me of being 18 and homeless; my whole life got disrupted,” the singer reflected to Elle of suddenly being a single mother.
“Divorce is obviously super painful, and you have to redefine everything … given my upbringing, I shouldn’t mother well or be a natural parent. So that meant I had to take it very, very seriously.”
When Jewel was 8, her mother left the family and her dad raised her and her brothers on a ranch in Homer, Alaska.
By the time she was 15, she’d moved out to live on her own in a cabin with no running water because her father had become abusive.
“My dad had really bad PTSD [from serving in the Vietnam war], but those words weren’t really known at the time. He tried to drink to handle the anxiety, and he became abusive,” she later told People. “As much as we have a genetic inheritance, we have an emotional inheritance. My dad was also raised in a wildly abusive home. I had a way better go of it than he did when he was young, but it still wasn’t good.”
After leaving, she hitchhiked to California, where she lived out of her car while working odd jobs and singing in cafes.
“To be that desperate, that down-and-out, I was suffering from agoraphobia, I had been shoplifting, I really wasn’t doing well,” she told US radio station NPR in 2015.
“I started just baring my soul in these songs and talking about my worst shame and my worst fears.”
Her music connected with the world, and she would go on to sell 30 million albums globally. In adulthood, she also reconciled with her father.
“He got sober and did this amazing inner work,” she told People in 2020. “It’s a profound transformation. We have a really authentic, great relationship now, but it’s because he did his work, and I did my work.”
In fact, with her milestone birthday coming up later this month, Jewel is content. “I’m more inspired now than I’ve ever been in my life. The most since I was like 19 or 20 years old,” she told People.
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