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Jennifer Lopez is a worldwide superstar. She has sold 80 million records, earned dozens of awards for music, made her mark as an actress in several critically-acclaimed roles and now she’s performing on one of the world’s biggest stages when she and Shakira rock out for the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, February 2.
Her dating life has always been the fodder for many news stories, as she has been linked to several high-profile men over the years — Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ben Affleck, Alex Rodriguez — but she largely keeps her children out of the public eye. Here’s what you need to know about JLo’s kids and family.
1. The Father of JLo’s Children is Marc Anthony, Her Ex-Husband
Amidst a string of famous boyfriends, Lopez has actually been married three times. The first two were both whirlwind romances and quick divorces. First JLo married waiter Ojani Noa in February 1997 and divorced him by January 1998. Then she married back-up dancer Cris Judd in September 2001; they were divorced by the following June.
After dating Ben Affleck for a little over a year, their break-up came as quite a shock to Lopez and she turned to her good friend Marc Anthony for comfort.
“Ben and I split up at the moment when I thought we were committing to each other forever, it was my first real heartbreak, it felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” wrote Lopez in her book True Love, adding, “I sought out comfort in another person, tried to find someone who could make me feel loved and wanted in my loneliest hour … Marc came back into my life three days after I should have been at the altar saying ‘I do’ to another man.”
“Thinking back, maybe deep down I knew that this was a Band-Aid on the cut, that my wound hadn’t been stitched or healed,” she wrote. “But I pushed all that to the back of my mind. Because life takes unpredictable twists and turns, right? And you’ve just got to go with what you feel is best in the moment.”
Lopez and Anthony married in June 2004 and would remain so until their split in 2011, though the divorce was not finalized until 2014.
2. Jlo and Anthony Have Twins Together
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During the marriage, JLo and Marc welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, on February 22, 2008. Emme Maribel was born first, at 12:12 a.m., and her twin brother Maximillian David followed about 10 minutes later. The first photos of the twins debuted in People the following month and were the most expensive celebrity baby photos at the time at $6 million.
Having twins runs in Lopez’s family, with her father, David, telling People en Espanol in an interview right before JLo gave birth, “Yes, twins. The thing is in my family, my sister also had twins, so it’s a hereditary thing. … I’m very proud. Jennifer has yearned to be a mother for many years.”
Max and Emme are JLo’s only children, though they are children five and six for Anthony. The “You Sang to Me” singer has two children with Debbie Rosado — a daughter named Arianna Muñiz, born in 1994, and a son named Alex “Chase” Muñiz, whom they adopted in 1995. Anthony later married Dayanara Torres in May 2000 and they had two sons together: Cristian Muñiz, born February 2001, and Ryan Muñiz, born August 2003.
3. The Twins Inherited Their Parents’ Singing Talent
If anyone is wondering if the two offspring of worldwide superstars JLo and Marc Anthony can sing, the answer is a resounding yes.
In recent years, Lopez has started showing off her son’s and daughter’s vocal prowess on social media. In one Instagram post, the “coconuts,” as JLo calls them, treated their family to a “dinner table serenade” of Vance Joy’s “Riptide,” with Emme accompany her brother on the ukulele.
Then in another post from a concert at The Forum in Inglewood, California, Emme got up on stage with her mom to perform “Limitless,” Lopez’s song from the rom-com Second Act starring Lopez, Leah Remini, Vanessa Hudgens, Treat Williams, and Milo Ventimiglia. And finally, there’s a third post of Emme taking on some Alicia Keys and absolutely killing it.
In fact, Lopez told Entertainment Tonight in May 2019 that Emme has an “amazing” voice.
“She’s got her daddy’s voice. She’s amazing,” Lopez said. “It’s natural. Emme could always sing. I remember when she was in the crib, when she was a baby, she used to be humming, like, really humming to herself. And Marc would say, ‘She’s singing, it feels good to her, it feels good to her soul and to her body,’ because he was like that. I was like, ‘You think she’s singing?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And he was right, and she’s always, since she was little, she could always sing.”
4. Will There Be More Children in JLo’s Life?
Lopez is set to marry former major league baseball player Alex Rodriguez sometime soon — in a behind-the-scenes video from her “It’s My Party” tour she said it will probably be sometime in 2020 and she wants a “big wedding” this time.
“I’d like to get married in a church this time,” said Lopez. “I’ve never been married in a church.”
When JLo and ARod do tie the knot, they’ll have a blended family of six between them, as ARod has two daughters with his ex-wife Cynthia Scurtis — Natasha, 15, and Ella, 11. Does this mean they’re done having kids? Not necessarily.
“I want to [have more kids]!” JLo told People in a recent interview. “I don’t know that it’s in God’s plan, but I would like to try. I’m so open to it!”
She also revealed that their four children have been nothing but supportive of their romance, saying, “When we got engaged, they were super happy … they know there is nothing but love for them always.”
5. JLo Isn’t the Only Famous Lopez, Though
The daughter of Guadalupe Rodriguez and David Lopez, JLo also has two sisters. While older sister Leslie largely stays out of the public eye as a stay-at-home mom, her younger sister Lynda is famous in her own right.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Lynda began working as a radio host, TV host, DJ, and news anchor. She was a VJ for VH1 for a short time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then went on to be the host of the Style Network’s GLOW, a women’s beauty and lifestyle show. In 2001, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Morning News Program for her work on New York’s WB11 WPIX.
Jennifer and Lynda also worked together to co-found the Lopez Family Foundation, which is “focused on helping women and children’s health and education.” They also co-chair the Global Mom Relay, a virtual relay connecting moms worldwide in support of the United Nations’ Every Woman Every Child movement, which helps women and children lead healthy lives.
In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Lopez said her “mother, sisters and daughter” are absolutely the biggest inspirations in her life.
“The strength I see in each and every one of them every day is what keeps me going,” said Lopez.
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