Kristen Messner, a photographer turned architectural designer, is the wife of the former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. They met in 1996, when she photographed him for an album cover, and married in 2000.
In June 2021 she filed for divorce in Los Angeles. Within three months Buckingham said they had agreed not to go through with it, and in late 2024 he referred to her as his wife in court papers. She has not spoken publicly about the marriage since the filing.
| Full name | Kristen Messner |
|---|---|
| Professional name | Kristen Buckingham |
| Work | Photographer, then interior and architectural designer |
| Grew up | Twin Lakes, Wisconsin |
| Age | Mid-50s (she was 51 in June 2021) |
| Married | Lindsey Buckingham, 2000 |
| Children | William (1998), Leelee (2000), Stella (2004) |
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How she met Lindsey Buckingham
Messner was a professional photographer when she met Buckingham on a shoot for one of his album covers in 1996. The following year he rejoined Fleetwood Mac for the reunion tour and live album The Dance.
Buckingham has said he met her late in life, after what he called “a lot of crazy girlfriends”, and that at first “it took Kristen a while to open up and feel safe with me”, so he had to wait. Both remarks came in 2011, in interviews with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and The National.
The designer behind the Buckingham homes
Messner later moved from photography into design, and she works under her married name, Kristen Buckingham.
The first house she and Buckingham built together was in Bel Air. In a 2004 interview with Town & Country, cited by People, she said its outdoor corridors were inspired by the porches she remembered from growing up in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, and that nothing beat sitting outside while the children played on the lawn.
Their Brentwood house, finished in 2007, took its cue from the 1920s homes of the Hollywood architect Wallace Neff.
“I wanted everything to have a human scale,” she told Elle Decor in 2009.
They sold it in 2019 for $28 million and moved to a smaller house further down the same street, which she also designed.
A farm named after the Queen of England
Her other great love is horses. In September 2016 she announced on Instagram that she had started a barn and was designing a farm in the Santa Rosa Valley, about 50 miles north-west of Brentwood. She named it Q of E Farm, short for Queen of England, and said the reason was a “very long story that I will spare you from”.
She wanted to build a house there and move the family. Buckingham didn’t think it was a good idea to take the children away from their lives in Los Angeles, and they stayed. The disagreement found its way into “Santa Rosa”, a song he wrote years before it came out on his 2021 solo album.
Songs she co-wrote, and songs about her
Messner has co-writing credits on two of her husband’s songs, and he has said others were written about her.
- “It Was You” (2006): a love song thanking her for marrying him and starting a family, he told Rolling Stone.
- “Did You Miss Me” and “Love Runs Deeper” (2008): Messner co-wrote both for Gift of Screws and took the album’s photographs. Buckingham called the collaborations “very nice accidents”.
- “In Our Own Time” and “When She Comes Down” (2011): two songs from Seeds We Sow that he has said were about her.
What she said when the band fired him
The Buckinghams were in New York in January 2018 when Fleetwood Mac were named MusiCares Person of the Year, and Messner posted the next day about how proud she was of the band. Within days Buckingham had been told he was out, following a disagreement over the timing of a world tour.
Weeks after the split became public in April, Messner saw a post on Mick Fleetwood’s Twitter account asking for the secret of the band’s success. She answered on Instagram, explaining that she was getting old and didn’t know how to use Twitter, and gave the credit to the chemistry of all five members, Stevie Nicks included. She had her own thoughts about what had happened, she wrote, but it was her “husband’s place to speak”.
She said a little more that autumn to Rolling Stone. Watching the new line-up’s first television appearance had made her sad, and when she ran into John McVie’s wife, Julie, at a local nail salon, she told her honestly that Lindsey was not doing great. The band had been like family, she told the magazine, and the children called its members aunts and uncles. She said marriage and fatherhood had softened him since they met, and then qualified it:
“He’s always been a prickly guy. That’s the truth.”
Buckingham and Nicks have since made peace. They reissued their 1973 duo album in 2025, and in August this year he said they were talking all the time.
Their family
William Gregory Buckingham, known as Will, was born in July 1998, two years before his parents married. In 2021 his father said he had just finished an internship at the Wasserman agency and loved to DJ.
Leelee was born in 2000. She was studying business at the University of Southern California in 2021 and has since worked as a real estate agent. Stella, born in 2004, is a show jumper. She rode for Q of E Farm as a junior, finishing in the top 25 at the 2021 Maclay Finals, a US national junior championship, and has since competed in grand prix classes.
Messner announced Buckingham’s emergency heart surgery on his Facebook page in February 2019, adding that the operation had damaged his vocal cords. “We feel so fortunate he’s alive,” she wrote. Three months later he played “Landslide” at Leelee’s high school graduation while she sang part of it with him. Messner shared a clip on Instagram and wrote on Twitter: “I cried, I’ll admit it.”
Why did Lindsey Buckingham and his wife split?
Messner has not given a public reason. Buckingham has said the lockdown strained the marriage and that she wanted some time to herself.
Early in 2021 she asked him for space, which she first called a “spatial break”, he told the Los Angeles Times. They had been seeing a marriage counsellor by phone, and during one session, he later said, she told the counsellor she wanted to file to see how it would feel.
She filed in Los Angeles on 2 June 2021, citing irreconcilable differences, and the news broke on 8 June, the day Buckingham announced a new solo album. By that summer she was renting a house in Mandeville Canyon, about a mile from the Brentwood home she had designed.
By September he sounded hopeful. He told The Times she was “coming round”, and told People he had not realised how many people file for divorce and then choose not to follow through. “Kristen and I agree that is the best course to follow,” he said.
Is Kristen Messner still married to Lindsey Buckingham?
As far as is publicly known, yes. No divorce has been announced since the couple put theirs on hold in 2021, and court papers from late 2024 describe her as his wife.
When Christine McVie died in November 2022, Messner reposted Buckingham’s handwritten tribute to his former bandmate with a line of her own: “We share Lindsey’s sentiment.”
The 2024 papers came from a restraining-order case. According to Rolling Stone, Buckingham told the court that a woman had been harassing the family since 2021, and the order granted that December covers Messner, Buckingham and their son for five years. Reports on the woman’s criminal case this year still describe Messner as his wife.
The couple were living in separate houses in 2021, and neither has said publicly whether that is still the case. Metro reported in July 2025 that rumours were circulating that the marriage had ended for good.
Where she is now
Messner’s Instagram profile describes her as an architectural designer and links to Q of E Farm, which still trains hunters and show jumpers in the Santa Rosa Valley. When she marked National Sons Day in 2023 with a photo of Will, she wrote: “Couldn’t be more proud of this kid.”
