Kenny Chesney "OK" Post-Renée

Wed., Sep. 21, 2005 9:05 AM PDT by Gina Serpe

He may have had her at hello, but Kenny Chesney is speaking out about the goodbye.

The country superstar has made his first public comments since wife of four months Ren?e Zellweger filed for an annulment last week.

"I'm all right," the Grammy-winning performer told Country Weekly this week for its Oct. 24 issue, which hits newsstands Oct. 10. "There have been better times, but I'll be okay."

Chesney, 37, spoke with the magazine from his home outside Nashville on Monday, just four days after news of the split went public.

"I hit everything so hard this year. I had the biggest tour I've ever done, I had a record to finish that was real important to me, and, of course, I had something new in my personal life, and I was trying to do that, too," Chesney said. "It really ended up being too much. At some point, I just got exhausted. I'd go from the road to the studio and back to the road, and it was that cycle all summer."

"That cycle" clearly took a toll on the newlyweds' honeymoon period: Chesney resumed his Somewhere in the Sun tour just three days after their surprise May 9 nuptials--London's Daily Mail estimated that the former fun couple spent no more than 15 days together since their wedding.

Zellweger, 36, filed for the annulment Sept. 14, citing "fraud" as the reason for the split. The Oscar winner attempted some damage control, claiming the term "is simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character."

However, family law attorneys have told E! Online that there is likely more to the claim than Zellweger let on.

"Fraud is a very high standard," said John Mayoue, who represented Jane Fonda in her split from Ted Turner. "For a court to accept this for fraud, it's going to have to be a very egregious situation."

Under California law, a fraudulent marriage means, in part, "the consent of either party was obtained by fraud." In layman's terms, another family law attorney, Glen L. Rabenn, explained a hypothetical case this way: A newlywed couple checks into a honeymoon suite; the husband pulls out a document declaring that he's impotent; the wife, previously unaware of this situation, checks out--and calls her lawyer.

To Rabenn, the big question in the Zellweger filing is "Why?"--as in: "Why did someone bother raising the fraud allegation?"

In a joint statement later released to Entertainment Tonight, Zellweger and Chesney said "the miscommunication of this objective of their marriage at the start of is the only reason for this annulment."

For his part, Chesney just wants some down time.

"I need a break real bad, and I'm going to go away for a couple of weeks--I'll be fine," he told the magazine.

"I'm tired right now, but by next year, I'll be excited to get back to it. And it'll be about the music again, not about the sideshow."