How it started! Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck‘s 2021 reunion made tons of headlines, and now the Hustlers star is finally opening up about how it all went down.
The “Get Right” songstress, 53, detailed her romance with the Oscar winner, 50, for the December cover story of Vogue magazine, published on Tuesday, November 8. “I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there,” the New York City native said of the Argo director. “When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real.”
The twosome — who were initially engaged from 2002 to 2004 — reconnected in early 2021 after Lopez split from ex-fiancé Alex Rodriguez. The Shades of Blue alum said that Affleck reached out to her after providing a quote about her for a magazine.
The JLo Beauty founder didn’t specify which article she was referring to, but the Justice League star was quoted in a May 2021 InStyle cover story about Lopez that appeared online in early April of that year. The Marry Me actress and the former baseball player, 47, announced their split less than two weeks after the article was published.
“I thought I had a good work ethic, but I was completely humbled and blown away by what she was committed to doing day in and day out, the seriousness in which she took her work, the quiet and dedicated way she went about accomplishing her goals, and then how she would go back and redouble her efforts,” Affleck gushed about his then-ex at the time. “She remains, to this day, the hardest-working person I’ve come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”
He added: “Where are you keeping the fountain of youth? Why do you look the same as you did in 2003 and it kind of looks like I’m in my 40s … at best?”
After Affleck tipped off Lopez about his gushing quote, the duo stayed in touch, and the rest is history. The Good Will Hunting writer proposed for the second time in April, and the twosome tied the knot in Las Vegas in July.
The following month, they had a second ceremony at Affleck’s home in Georgia that was attended by their friends, family and children. The Live by Night director shares Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and Samuel, 10, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, from whom he split in 2015. Lopez, for her part, shares twins Max and Emme, 14, with ex-husband Marc Anthony.
“Ben and Jen are still in their honeymoon phase,” an insider exclusively told Us Weekly in October. “They are very head over heels for each other. Becoming husband and wife hasn’t changed their relationship much, except for the fact that it solidified what they had.”
Keep scrolling for more revelations from Lopez’s Vogue cover story.
