Jennifer Lopez: Her first ex-husband reveals what marriage with JLo was like

Jennifer Lopez and love is a drama with many chapters. Her comeback with Ben Affleck recently failed and a divorce has been filed. Ojani Noa was the first to marry Lopez, in 1997, when the singer and actress’ career was just beginning to take off. Back then, she was no longer “Jenny from the Block,” but JLo, the star, didn’t exist yet. In an interview with the tabloid “DailyMail,” Noa revealed what it was like to be married to Jennifer Lopez. These are memories of a brief pleasure.

Noa was 15 when he came to the USA illegally from Cuba with his girlfriend on a rubber dinghy. He worked as a car washer on the streets of Miami, and later as a dishwasher in the restaurant of singer Gloria Estefan. He was 22, and had since become a waiter, when Jennifer Lopez, then 27, entered the restaurant. He did not know that she was already a starlet on the rise at that point. What he did know: “She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” And she came back. “It was as if we had always known each other,” says Noa about their first meetings. A year later they married.

Jennifer Lopez’s first marriage – a perfect world that quickly crumbled

They spent a simple honeymoon in Key West, visited museums and went on a boat trip. “Our honeymoon was modest and simple,” says Noa. Her married life in Los Angeles was also said to have been less than glamorous at the time. “We worked, came home and cooked dinner together – rice, beans and chicken, simple Latin American food.” Instead of haute couture, JLo wore sweatpants and a tank top at home. It was a perfect world, but it quickly crumbled.

At the end of the 90s, Jennifer Lopez was on the verge of her big breakthrough. The pressure and fear of failure were huge, she had panic attacks, was insecure, constantly asked if she looked fat and cried a lot at the time, says Noa. The relationship with Lopez was an emotional rollercoaster. The nail in the coffin of the marriage, at least that’s how her ex-husband feels, was Lopez’s success with the film “Selena”.

With success, Lopez changed

With fame, Lopez also changed. The simple girl who previously didn’t want to know anything about the paparazzi became a diva, suddenly seeking the spotlight. She enjoyed the attention. So much so that Noa saw her marriage in danger: “I said to her, you need a private life. A relationship can’t be real if you’re constantly being photographed.” He hated going to red carpets and pretending to be the happy couple. He remembers how they once argued in the car on the way to a Grammy Awards and had to pretend 20 minutes later that everything was fine.

After one of these arguments, Lopez sulked in their shared bedroom. Then she called him and begged him to come to her. After which they had passionate sex, perhaps the most passionate of their entire relationship: “It was so great, but at the same time so sad because we knew it was the end of the road.” After just eleven months, the marriage had failed.

He ended the marriage, Noa said in the interview. At the time, they acted as if he was the bad guy who didn’t want to be with Lopez anymore. The opposite was the case, he claims. Despite everything, he bears no grudge against his ex-wife, who married three more men after him. When asked whether he could imagine their love coming back, he laughed: “Absolutely not!” Instead, he has a tip for Lopez: next time she meets someone, she should keep it to herself and not get married again. And: “When you’re with someone, you have to spend time with them and not think about the camera.”

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