Second time’s the charm! Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are engaged again after rekindling their romance nearly two decades after their original split.
Lopez, 52, confirmed the happy news via her On the JLo newsletter 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 the “major announcement” with a video on Twitter. “So I have a really exciting and special story to share…” the singer told her followers, adding a diamond ring emoji to her Twitter handle.
The engagement ring is 8.5 carats with a natural green diamond center stone.
Before the duo were officially engaged, an insider exclusively told Us Weekly that the pair were already thinking about their dream nuptials. “Both Ben and Jen want their wedding to be an elaborate statement of their love story for their friends and family,” the source said in December 2021. “They really want [everyone] to have a good time. They want it to be intimate, but immaculate.”
Earlier this year, the Marry Me actress admitted that she had never dreamed she and Affleck, 49, would get back together. “I don’t think anybody was more surprised than us,” she said during a February appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “You never could imagine something like that could happen. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The Hustlers star and the Oscar winner originally began their relationship in January 2002 after meeting on the set of the movie Gigli. The couple got engaged in November of that year but called off their wedding, planned for September 2003, because of “excessive media attention.” Four months later, they officially broke up.
In June 2004, Lopez married Marc Anthony, with whom she shares twins Max and Emme, 14. The pair split in 2011 and finalized their divorce in 2014. Affleck, for his part, moved on with Jennifer Garner, whom he married in 2005. The duo, who separated in 2015, share daughters Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and son Samuel, 10.
The couple, affectionately known as Bennifer, made headlines again in April 2021 when they were spotted hanging out together in Los Angeles shortly after Lopez’s split from fiancé Alex Rodriguez. Within one month, a source told Us Weekly that they were “full-on dating and very happy together.”
Major announcement!!!! https://t.co/G5oGxtX0z5 pic.twitter.com/HTIqbHMJ2M
— jlo 💍 (@JLo) April 9, 2022
Before their reunion, the twosome maintained a friendly relationship. “Where are you keeping the fountain of youth?” the Argo director told InStyle in April 2021 for a cover story on the “Jenny From the Block” songstress. “Why do you look the same as you did in 2003 and it kind of looks like I’m in my 40s … at best?”
In the same interview, the Way Back star complimented the Bronx native on her tremendous commitment to her career.
“She remains, to this day, the hardest working person I’ve come across in this business,” the Good Will Hunting screenwriter said. “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.”
The Enough actress previously opened up about how much she liked the pink diamond ring that Affleck gave her for their first engagement.
“I loved getting it, don’t get me wrong,” she said in April 2020, recalling the time Barbra Streisand asked her about the sparkler.
The “Waiting for Tonight” singer also described Affleck as her “first real heartbreak,” noting that their first split led to her marriage to Anthony, 53.
“It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir True Love. “People do lots of things to anesthetize themselves in moments like these. Some people do drugs, some drink and some go out and party. I sought out comfort in another person, tried to find someone who could make me feel loved and wanted in my loneliest hours. And that was the moment when Marc reappeared in my life.”
In July 2021, an insider told Us that the twosome were “both thrilled” by “how seamlessly” they’d fit back into each other’s lives following their reunion.
“The past few months have been a real whirlwind,” the source added at the time. “They’re well aware some cynics still look at it as a big flashy attention grab and roll their eyes at the speed of it all, but it doesn’t faze them one iota. They’re fully committed to taking the next steps and spending the rest of their lives together.”
