“She’s everything you might think, but it just hasn’t happened,” the Oscar winner told Howard Stern.
Kevin Costner is setting the record straight regarding his friendship with Jewel.
During an interview with Howard Stern on Tuesday, June 18, the Yellowstone actor, 69, revealed that he and the singer, 50, are strictly platonic.
Stern asked the Oscar winner if he was in love at the moment, noting he’s “heard rumors” about him and the “Foolish Games” singer. Costner explained that he’s not in love or involved with Jewel and that the speculation is nothing more than rumors.
“No, Jewel and I are friends. We’ve never gone out ever,” he asserted. “She’s special, and I don’t want, I don’t want these rumors to ruin our friendship because that’s what we have. She’s special to me. She’s beautiful enough to go out with.”
“How does that s— start? Kevin, how does that work?” Stern, 70, asked.
“We were down at Branson’s Island. She has a foundation, which I didn’t know, and she was part of the foundation. And Richard Branson has been asking me for years to come down to Necker Island, and so I finally did,” Costner explained.
“I’m divorced all of a sudden. I’m a single father, and he’s asked me for, you know, 10 years to come down there. I said, ‘I guess I’ll go down.’” He then explained that it was him, Jewel, Emma Watson, and seven other people “who weren’t celebrities.”
“She was somebody I just had some tremendous conversations with along with Emma,” he said, before explaining that the “rumor was [he] went down on a private plane with her” and “went back on a private plane [with her].”
“I was on with nine people and, and I don’t want the press to ruin this for us, because … I’ve had conversations with her, text-wise, and she’s so smart, and she’s been through a lot herself, and so we have a friendship. We don’t have a romance, and we’ve not dated,” revealed Costner.
“She’s beautiful and smart enough for all those things. It just has never happened for us,” he added. “She’s everything you might think, but it just hasn’t happened.”
He also revealed to Stern that even his teenage children — sons Cayden, 17, Hayes, 15, and daughter Grace, 14 — were asking about the rumored romance. He shares his three children with ex-wife Christine Baumgartner.
The pair sparked speculation after they were seen together at the aforementioned charity event in the British Virgin Islands in December 2023.
The photos followed Baumgartner’s divorce filing in May 2023. The pair were married for 18 years and finalized their divorce in February 2024.
Jewel was previously married to rodeo champion Ty Murray. The two eloped in 2008 before they divorced in 2014. They share a 12-year-old son, Kase.
In April 2024, she played coy with ELLE magazine when asked about their relationship. “He’s a great person,” she said. “The public fascination is intense for sure.”
