Oui, oui! Yep, Celine Dion is pregnant with twins after five failed attempts via in vitro. But that's not the only thing the French-Canadian chanteuse, 42, has to sing about these days. Besides releasing her new expanded version of her documentary, Celine: Through The Eyes Of The World, and the live disc set Taking Chances World Tour: The Concert, she told me that she's also moving into a new mega-mansion on Jupiter Island, Fla., and celebrating 16 years of marriage to manager Rene Angelil, 68 (he's also dad to their nine-year-old son, Rene Charles!).
I asked Celine how she's made it work for so long and she said it hasn't always been easy. See below for her secrets!
UsMagazine.com: One of the things that is so inspiring is your love with Rene. How have you been able to keep it so strong?
Celine Dion: You know, it's hard, it's not always very easy. You see a lot of people divorcing and all of that is extremely sad because [marriage] is one of the challenges that life exposes to you. The first few years are beautiful and pink and all of that, but you [have to] make sure that you are strong enough and you are growing. Like being a parent, if you think that the "terrible twos" are difficult, wait till [your kids] are 13 and 16 — that's another challenge. Maybe six years ago, Rene and I were having a lot of tension — [our marriage was] a lot of hard work. I had a tendency in the past to kind of keep everything to myself and not really talk about it anad try to wait that it is going to go away. But it never goes away just actively.
Us: What do you mean?
CD: Communication is the key. Instead of [asking] 'why didn't you call me?,' I found a way to say things like 'I was so worried, I missed your call, I would have loved for you to have called me because I miss you so much.' Or, 'I wish you would have been home today because so many wonderful things happened, we thought of you so much and we missed you.' For me what works is not the "you" but the "I" and I tell [Rene] what I want and it works. I just have to tell him what would have been better for all of us maybe or just given it a try but communication [is key].
Us: That's so smart, such great advice. You should write a book in your downtime.
CD: We try. It's not easy. It's always challenging but that's what makes marriage strong. Challenges will always happen, different things happen in life. It's up to you to show your commitment to your marriage if you are willing to do it for life. Everybody goes through different little things and for some people it is very hard — the money issue and all of that stuff makes a lot of tension.
Us: Well, you have a lot of humor too and I think joking with him all of the time helps too.
CD: Everybody needs a little humor here and there — I guess that sometimes brings the tension down.
By Ian Drew for UsMagazine.com. To read more of Ian's blog, click here and don't forget to follow him on Twitter.
