The man sitting opposite me is recounting an extraordinary scene: after a furious row, his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jennifer Lopez is stewing in the bedroom at their marital home in California.
Minutes later, she calls him – their mansion is so large he wouldn’t hear her if she shouted – imploring him to come upstairs.
What followed, he says, was one of the most passionate encounters in their marriage.
‘It was so great, but at the same time so sad because we kind of knew it was the end of the road.’
Ojani Noa married Jennifer Lopez in 1997 and is the only one of her four spouses to have known and loved her before she became a global icon
One could well imagine similar intense scenes as Jennifer Lopez’s marriage to actor Ben Affleck collapsed.
She filed for divorce last month, two years after walking down the aisle in a highly-publicised second run at love, having been engaged for two years between 2002-2004.
But the man talking to me is not her most recent husband but her first: Ojani Noa, the original Mr J-Lo. Their union was the blueprint for her three further marriages – to dancer Cris Judd, singer Marc Anthony and most recently, Affleck. She even used the same term of endearment for Ojani and Affleck – Papi (‘Daddy’ in Spanish).
The only one of her four spouses to have known and loved her before she became a global icon – and an, at times, uncomfortable passenger in her rise to fame – Ojani knows well the complex realities of being married to, and divorced from, Jennifer Lopez.
‘I was the first, the pioneer,’ he says, talking exclusively to the Mail. ‘I was there at the beginning of her career supporting her, dealing with her anxieties and insecurities.
‘I was a really good husband because I believe in marriage. When we divorced, I was heartbroken. I feel when she got what she wanted, I was no longer needed.’
Marrying in 1997, a little over a year after meeting, they split just 11 months later.
‘I put a lot of time and effort into loving her,’ he says. ‘But when you’re with someone, you have to spend quality time with them and not think about being on camera.’
Now 49 and a personal trainer and actor/producer based in Miami, Ojani arrived in the US illegally aged 15 after making the perilous 90-mile trip from Cuba to Florida with six friends on an inflatable raft.
Working hard to make a life for himself – washing cars on the streets of Miami, then dishes at singer Gloria Estefan’s restaurant, Larios On The Beach – the 22-year-old had become a waiter there when Jennifer, then 27, walked in.
Ojani, who is single and has never remarried, still has the good looks that first caught Jennifer’s eye.
He says he didn’t have a clue who she was but remembers thinking, ‘she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She had an incredible body too. She still does’.
Jennifer came back the next day and her assistant requested that Ojani serve at their table.
‘I talked to Jennifer a bit more,’ he says. ‘She didn’t really speak Spanish and my English wasn’t that good at the time, but we would talk and laugh together.’
It was 1996 and Jennifer had been in town filming Blood and Wine with Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine. After the film’s wrap party that night, her assistant invited Ojani to a nearby club at Jennifer’s request. They danced, then kissed. It was, he said, ‘like we’d known each other for ever’.
J-Lo headed back to Los Angeles next day and for weeks they talked for hours over the phone.
‘My phone bills were crazy,’ he laughs. ‘But we got to know each other more.’
Now 49 and a personal trainer and actor/producer based in Miami, Ojani arrived in the US illegally aged 15 after travelling from Cuba to Florida on an inflatable raft
Weeks later Jennifer invited him to be her date for the premiere. He hired a suit, walked the red carpet, feeling pangs of panic as cameras flashed and fans screamed.
He recalls Jennifer introducing him to Michael Caine who told him: ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’
‘I’d come to this country on a raft,’ says Ojani. ‘It was shocking.’
After the event the pair went back to her hotel, where Ojani says, they made ‘perfect’ love for the first time.
Did he wonder what a woman on the verge of superstardom saw in a waiter from Cuba?
He nods. ‘I asked her: “Why me? I’m just a regular guy”.
‘And she said, “I know, but I saw something special in you I didn’t see in the other guys I worked with”.
‘So, I thought, well, I’m the lucky one.’
While Ben and Jennifer’s latest romance was conducted with an ever-present paparazzi, her relationship with Ojani was quite low key.
‘I had moved into Jennifer’s apartment and was working for a craft services company [providing food for actors and crew on film sets],’ he says. ‘If she was filming, I’d go to work and then join her on set. At the weekends, we’d go shopping, to movies or out for meals at normal little restaurants.
‘Whatever money I had, I would pay – we both would. She would introduce me to friends. I never felt like an outsider. We were just happy and in love.
‘We started talking about marriage within months of seriously dating and I asked her to marry me about a year and a half after we met.’
Jennifer was on the verge of global fame, after landing the eponymous role in Selena – a biopic about a Latina singer who was shot dead by an obsessed fan.
During the wrap party, Ojani proposed, getting down on one knee in front of cheering cast and crew.
Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck last month, two years after walking down the aisle in a highly-publicised second run at love
The engagement ring cost $15,000, certainly cheaper than Ben’s $5.6 million (£4.2 million) green diamond, but Ojani laughs, ‘It was still a lot of money back then’.
Rather than a controlling, obsessive Bridezilla, he says Jennifer was the epitome of laid-back calm.
‘We were in Arizona because she was filming. When we were off at the weekends, we’d fly to Miami to see the wedding planner,’ he says. ‘We had fallen in love very fast, but everything was really mellow.’
While her union to Ben involved two ceremonies – one in Las Vegas followed by a more lavish affair at Affleck’s 87-acre Georgia estate – Jennifer’s wedding to Ojani took place in a friend’s Miami back yard.
After the wedding they took a trip to Key West, Florida – very different from her opulent honeymoons in Paris and Italy with Ben.
In Key West, Ojani remembers, ‘we visited museums, went on a boat ride. Our honeymoon was pure, humble, simple. Nothing like her latest, which was off the scale.’
Indeed, in 2022, with paparazzi capturing Ben and Jen’s every move, the new Mr Lopez began to look increasingly frustrated.
‘In some honeymoon pictures,’ says Ojani, ‘[Ben] looks like he wants to be there with her, but just not photographed. I can understand that. The wedding is for everybody but the honeymoon is a private moment. To me, it seemed like she was saying: “Look at us – we’re on honeymoon! [Let’s] have everybody see us”.’
As Ojani and Jennifer settled into married life in LA, it was, he says, a blissful time.
‘We’d work, come home and cook dinner together – rice, beans and chicken, just simple Latin food.’
Sadly it soon began to unravel, and in a manner Ojani sees echoed in Jennifer’s recent Netflix documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which explores her romance with Ben.
Ojani and I watch it together and he’s struck by the parallels to his own marriage. Jennifer recounts how Ben likes her without make-up, dressed down in tracksuit bottoms.
‘When we were together, she would dress simply in workout clothes and a tank top and I also thought she looked very natural and beautiful,’ he says.
In one scene, Jennifer tries on gowns and asks Ben if she looks fat. ‘And yes, she was exactly the same with me,’ Ojani says.
‘When we went shopping or had people coming over with dresses for a special occasion she would try them on and ask: “Do I look fat?” and I’d say: “Of course you don’t look fat, you look amazing.” It’s like: you know you look good – come on!
‘So I could understand Ben. We would both try to get her confidence a little bit higher.’
Another scene shows Ben buoying Jennifer, who was worrying that her film, This is Me… Now, won’t be good enough. Again, the exchange with Jennifer – who once wrote in her newsletter, On The JLo, of having panic attacks in her 20s – resonates.
‘[Back then] Selena was a hard movie for her because there was a lot of pressure,’ he says. ‘She would get anxiety attacks, become insecure and cry.
‘I’d tell her she was doing an amazing job. I’d be holding her hand, saying: “You can do it, no problem”.’
In Ojani’s telling, life with one of the world’s most famous women was an emotional juggernaut: no surprise when the star admits her greatest desire is to be loved.
‘But she’s had four good husbands and she’s been loved before,’ he says, ‘so I don’t know how much love she needs or how much love she’s still looking for.’
The death knell, as he sees it, was in part her desire for public attention, after the success of Selena. Whereas before, she could be as irritated as he was by photographers, her attitude changed.
‘I felt she was 1726293543 really enjoying the media attention,’ he says. ‘I would say to her: “You have to be private. You can’t be real in a relationship if you’re always being photographed”.’
Ojani recognises a similar frustration in Ben, who was often photographed looking, he says, ‘like he wants to break someone’s head off.’
In one video clip, which became an internet meme, Ben is filmed holding a car door open for his wife before slamming it shut.
‘I could see myself doing that too,’ says Ojani. Further tensions erupted when J-Lo’s record company encouraged her to be seen in Miami and New York nightclubs with Sean Combs, aka Puff Daddy, who was helping produce a record with her, while Ojani remained in LA, managing the Conga Room nightclub which Jennifer part-owned.
Ojani became increasingly reluctant to maintain the facade that all was well – seemingly like Ben, who was captured at the Grammy’s in 2023 looking bored then annoyed, when apparently being reprimanded by his wife.
Ben later said, despite appearances, he was having a good time and they just didn’t know the cameras were rolling.
For Ojani, again, it brought back memories. ‘In my opinion, they got into some argument [at the Grammys] and then were like: “Oh my God, we got caught”.
‘I can tell you in my own experience, we would have disagreements in the car and then 20 minutes later, we’d have to sit and pretend everything was fine.
‘But you can only pretend so much,’ he says. ‘When we were going through hell and going out as a couple, I was in a bad mood too. Because I knew inside we were not good.
‘I hated going on the red carpet. She would try and get me to come and I’d say: “No way. I’m not going to pretend”.’
Ojani says it was he who called time on their marriage and a few days later says he received the divorce papers. He reportedly received a $50,000 settlement after their split in January 1998.
‘I never looked at another woman when I was with Jennifer,’ says Ojani, ‘But I felt like I was [being seen as] the bad guy.
‘[Her people] wanted to make her look good because of everything that was coming out – the movie, the album, and they didn’t want any bad publicity.
‘They made it sound like I didn’t want to be with her and it was the opposite.’
The fall-out of his marriage bears some similarity to that of Ben’s as friends of the singer have, in recent weeks, publicly branded the actor, ‘selfish, sullen, impossible to please most of the time and negative’.
Ojani, though, praises Ben, saying: ‘I’ve met him and he’s an amazing guy. Even though they’re both in the spotlight, you can tell that he’s a really private man.’
On the other hand, he points out of his ex-wife, ‘she has to like the spotlight for her to stay in it.’
Yet Ojani bears his former wife no ill will. ‘There are no bad feelings at all. I would always be her friend. I sympathise with both of them because divorce is hard.’
Should they ever meet up and romance were to strike again, would he become husband Number Five? ‘No way!’ he laughs.
His advice for Jennifer, though, is heartfelt.
‘Stay single for a while, take 12 months off,’ he says. ‘If she meets someone new, maybe keep it private and not get married again.
She has an amazing career and she’s a hard-working, beautiful woman, but when you’re with someone, you have to spend quality time with them and not think about being on camera.’
He adds: ‘I would just say to Jen: you need to be yourself so you can find yourself.’
