MIKE WENGREN Recalls Proposing To His Now-Ex-Wife During DISTURBED's 2005 Concert In Wisconsin

In a new interview with Australia's Rebel FM, DISTURBED drummer Mike Wengren reflected on how he proposed to his then-girlfriend, Tina, onstage during the band's August 2005 concert in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right before DISTURBED launched into its set closer, "Stupify". Mike said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "At the time, I was dating the... Well, she's my ex-wife now, actually, which is funny. But no, things are cool. She's my baby mama. At the time, we were dating, and the band was getting a lot of notoriety, and I was gone a lot because we were on the road. And so she would be out with her friends, and they were, like, 'Well, where's your boyfriend?' And she'd be, like, 'Oh, he's on the road.' 'Oh, yeah? What does he do?' 'Oh, blah, blah, blah.' And they'd be, like, 'Sure it is.' So it was kind of a way to flip off all the doubters, the people who thought that we weren't serious. And so that was part of it. But all of her close friends and family were there that day, and it was a great way for me to do that in front of everybody. Now, fast-forward years later, seven years ago we got divorced, and we're actually better friends these days than we were probably when we were together. We share two kids together, and things are absolutely great."

DISTURBED's latest album, 2022's "Divisive", album was four years in the making, during which two of the bandmembers' marriages broke down. Wengren got divorced early in the pandemic and guitarist Dan Donegan went through a split in early 2022. In early 2023, DISTURBED singer David Draiman divorced his wife of 11 years, Lena.

The DISTURBED song "Don't Tell Me", which appears on "Divisive", was inspired by Donegan's divorce. "Mine hadn't been finalized yet [when the song was written]," David said in a 2023 interview. "And to be honest, when I wrote the song, I didn't realize how prophetic it was going to be. I kind of hate that shit. [Laughs] It ended up becoming not just about Dan's divorce, unfortunately. It wasn't exactly the same situation, but I definitely have added reverence for the song, and it has added meaning and power to me, especially now."

DISTURBED released a new single, "I Will Not Break", in February 2025 via the band's own label, Mother Culture Records.

Last year, DISTURBED completed the U.S. leg of "The Sickness 25th Anniversary Tour". The trek celebrated 25 years of DISTURBED's seminal debut album which launched the band into public consciousness and is one of the most important and influential heavy metal albums of all time.

Since "The Sickness" was released in 2000, the album was certified five times platinum by the RIAA, spent a total of 106 weeks on the US Billboard 200 chart, and Revolver named it one of "Top 25 Debut Hard Rock Albums." Billboard said of the title track upon release: "'Down With The Sickness' is, of course, the quintessential DISTURBED song, harnessing all the band's seethe and its now-famous tribal beat and guitar chug into three and a half minutes of alt-metal mayhem. It's menacing, it's rhythmic, it's rebellious."

Photo credit: Travis Shinn