Metallica frontman James Hetfield has announced his engagement to girlfriend Adriana Gillett, revealing the news with a proposal that unfolded underwater during a shark dive.
The moment surfaced on Metallica’s social media (March 15th), showing Hetfield holding a sign beneath the water that read: ‘Adriana Gillett, will you marry me?’ The post was captioned simply: ‘She said yes!’
Gillett later shared the same image on her own Instagram, revealing more about the unusual setting for the proposal (per blabbermouth):
“The BEST birthday trip surprise. Swimming with whale sharks on Friday the 13th with the most unique, special, and romantic proposal a Pisces could ever imagine. In a sea full of fish, we caught each other. Thank you God for putting us together”.
A new chapter for the Metallica frontman
The engagement arrives several years after Hetfield’s 2022 split from his wife of 25 years, Francesca Hetfield, at the time TMZ reported that the Metallica singer had filed for divorce earlier that year in Colorado, Francesca later confirmed the separation in a statement.
“After 30 years of ups and downs but always with a lot of love, I am extremely saddened that my marriage has come to this.”
Hetfield and Francesca met in 1992 and married in 1997, raising three children together Cali, Marcella, and Castor, despite the separation, the pair have reportedly remained in contact while co-parenting their family.
A life lived in the spotlight
Over the decades, Hetfield has been unusually open about the personal struggles that came with fronting one of the biggest metal bands on the planet, in 2021, speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, he reflected on the pressure of stepping onstage in front of tens of thousands of fans:
“The word ‘unraveling’ is a great word, like unlearning, unlearning all of what happened before. That was a part of me, for sure, but it dominated all of me.”
His battles with addiction have also been well documented. Hetfield returned to rehab in 2019 to continue working on his recovery, after previously entering treatment nearly two decades earlier.
Back in 2003, reflecting on his first stint in rehab, Hetfield described the experience bluntly:
“Going away to rehab taught me about priorities.”
Those personal battles became part of Metallica’s public story, most famously captured in the band’s 2004 documentary ‘Some Kind Of Monster’, which showed the frontman confronting addiction, burnout, and the pressures of life inside a global metal institution.
Now, with the engagement announcement surfacing online, Hetfield appears to be entering another new chapter in a life that has rarely followed a predictable script.
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