The second time is lovely! Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are engaged again after reviving their romance nearly two decades after their initial breakup.
Lopez, 52, confirmed the happy news in a newsletter on the JLo on Friday, April 8. In a video message sent to her fans, an emotional Lopez showed off her huge green diamond engagement ring, saying: “You’re perfect. She also teased an “important announcement” video on Twitter. “So, I have a really exciting and special story that I want to share…,” the singer told her followers, adding a smiley face with a diamond ring to her Twitter account.
“Both Ben and Jen want their wedding to be an elaborate exposition of their love story for their friends and family,” a source said in December 2021. “They really want [everyone] to have a good time. They want it to be intimate but flawless.”
Earlier this year, the “Marry Me” actress admitted that she never dreamed that she and 49-year-old Affleck would be together again. “I don’t think anyone was more surprised than we were,” she said during a February appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show. “You could never imagine that something like this could happen. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The star of “Stripper” and the Oscar winner tied their relationship in January 2002 after meeting on the set of the movie “Gigli”. The couple got engaged in November of the same year, but canceled the wedding, scheduled for September 2003, due to “excessive media attention.” Four months later, they officially broke up.
Major announcement!!!! https://t.co/G5oGxtX0z5 pic.twitter.com/HTIqbHMJ2M
— jlo (@JLo) April 9, 2022
In June 2004, Lopez married Marc Anthony, with whom she has twins Max and Emma, 14 years old. The couple separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce in 2014. Affleck, for his part, left with Jennifer Garner, whom he married in 2005. The duo, who broke up in 2015, have daughters Violet, 16, Serafina, 13, and son Samuel, 10.
The couple, affectionately known as Bennifer, made headlines again in April 2021 when they were spotted together in Los Angeles shortly after Lopez’s breakup with fiance Alex Rodriguez.
Before their reunion, the couple maintained friendly relations. “Where do you keep the fountain of youth?” the director of Argo InStyle said in April 2021 for the cover of the singer’s song Jenny From the Block. “Why do you look the same as in 2003, and I think I’m over 40… at best?”
In the same interview, the “Way Back” star praised the Bronx native for her tremendous commitment to her career.
“She remains to this day the hardest working person I’ve met in this business,” said screenwriter Will Hunting. “She has a great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I am so happy for her that it seems she is finally getting the recognition she deserves.”
The Enough actress previously told how she liked the pink diamond ring Affleck gave her for their first engagement.
“I loved getting it, don’t get me wrong,” she said in April 2020, recalling how Barbra Streisand asked her about a sparkler.
The “Waiting for Tonight” singer also described Affleck as “the first real grief,” noting that their first breakup led to her marriage to 53-year-old Anthony.
“It felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest,” she wrote in her memoir True Love in 2014. “People do a lot of things to numb themselves at such moments. Someone uses drugs, someone drinks, and someone goes to parties. I was looking for solace in another person, trying to find someone who could make me feel loved and desired in the loneliest hours. And that was the moment when Mark reappeared in my life.”
In July 2021, an insider told us that the two were “both excited” about “how organically” they had returned to each other’s lives after reuniting.
“The last few months have been a whirlwind,” the source added at the time. “They know perfectly well that some cynics still look at it as an attractive attention and roll their eyes at the speed of it all, but it doesn’t bother them one iota. They are fully committed to taking the next steps and spending the rest of their lives together.”
