Today Show host Hoda Kotb found Jennifer Lopez’s marriage to Ben Affleck inspiring because the singer did not give up on love after heartbreak. Lopez and Affleck were married on July 16, twenty years after they first got engaged and two years after Lopez’s breakup with Alex Rodriguez. Kotb went through heartbreak herself recently, as she and longtime boyfriend Joel Schiffman called off their engagement during the 2021 holiday season.
“I just have to say something about Jennifer Lopez,”Kotb shared this with her Today with Hoda & Jenna Jenna Bush Hager, co-host, July 18. “I feel like some women, when they get their heart broken, curl up and say, ‘That’s it, that was the best part of my life is now past, and my heart’s broken and I won’t let that happen to me again.’ They get that suit of armor and that’s how they barrel through life.”
Kotb has previously interviewed Lopez. “Dance Again”The singer does the opposite. “There’s always been, since the first time I interviewed her, a vulnerability that says, ‘I’m open,'”Kotb stated.
Lopez and Affleck got engaged in 2003, and they split the next year. Marc Anthony, Lopez’s singer husband, was then her spouse. Emme and Max are 14-year-old twins. Lopez later fell in love with Rodriguez after their split in 2014. Lopez and Rodriguez got engaged in March 2019, but they called it off in April 2021. Affleck and Lopez began to date again just weeks later.
Jennifer Garner married Affleck in 2005. Violet (16 years old), Seraphina (13 years) and Samuel (10 years old) are their children. Affleck and Garner parted in 2017 and they finalized their separation in October 2018. He briefly dated Saturday Night Live producer Lindsay Shookus and actress Ana de Armas before reuniting with Lopez.
“You know what, people may say what they’re going to say… you get one, beautiful life to live,”Kotb stated. “What are you going to do? Are you gonna sit back and say, ‘Well, look at me, I’m all protected.’ No, you dove back in, you’re going to Vegas! With your old boyfriend! Who you know looks at her like he did 20 years ago.”
Kotb suffered her own heartbreak when she and Schiffman ended their engagement last year. They were together for eighteen years. Together they adopted Haley, 5, as well as Hope, 2. “Joel and I have had a lot of prayerful and meaningful conversations over the holidays and we decided that we are better as friends and parents than we are as an engaged couple, so we decided we are going to start this new year on our new path as loving parents to our adorably delightful children and as friends,”Kotb shared this information with viewers in January.
