Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez Open Up on Why They’re Perfect for Each Other

If you have been on social media at all this past summer, then you have likely seen the adorable photos that new lovers Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez have been posting ever since they got together and debuted their relationship on the Met Gala red carpet last spring. The Latinx power couple seem to be totally and completely in love—and their Vanity Fair cover is here to prove it.

The couple speak candidly about their love life, how they got together and all of the love lessons they have learned before and since they met. For one, JLo talks about how she approached him first after seeing him walk into her lunch place in Beverly Hills last winter.

“I could literally just have walked away,” she said to Vanity Fair. But she got up her courage to say “Hey” and the rest is history.

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Though Rodriguez didn’t originally know if their first date was indeed a date, Lopez found his talkative confidence very attractive. And once he knew she was single, he let her know right away what he really thought of her with a sly “You look sexy AF” text while he went to the bathroom. Despite this unsure start, though, their love blossomed quickly. Rodriguez attests this to their many similarities.

“We are very much twins,” he said. “We’re both Leos; we’re both from New York; we’re both Latino and about 20 other things.”

Lopez agreed.

“I understand him in a way that I don’t think anyone else could, and he understands me in a way that no one else could ever,” she said. “In his 20s, he came into big success with the biggest baseball contract [at the time]. I had a No. 1 movie and a No. 1 album and made history. We both had ups and downs and challenges in our 30s, and by our 40s we’d both been through so much. And more importantly than anything, we had both done a lot of work on ourselves.”

The two have been through a lot before they met. Lopez, with her wildly successful career but rocky personal life due to three divorces, and Rodriguez, with his retirement from a prominent baseball career last year and steroid scandal of the mid-2000s. Their successes and failures helped them to relate to one another. Lopez credits the “pressure on ourselves to be great” as something that they instantly understood about each other.

The couple talked openly about their goals, their businesses and, most importantly, the things that truly matter to them: Helping the victims of Hurricane Maria. The benefit concert that Lopez, together with Rodriguez and her ex-husband Marc Anthony, organized in mid-October brought in over $20 million in pledges for Puerto Rico and Mexico’s relief efforts.

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The two are also most proud of the support they provide each other, such as reminding each other to keep having “gratitude and appreciation,” Rodriguez said.

“When someone offers me a job, I thank the Lord that I have work, and I beg for more work,” he said. “We’re really good at reminding each other.”

It’s clear from the Vanity Fair story that their greatest love lessons stem from not only what they learned before meeting but the journey they have gone on since. As he said, they are truly “living the dream.”