A Cuban TikToker revived this week one of the lesser-known episodes of Jennifer Lopez's life: her visit to Cuba in January 1997, when the actress traveled to Jaimanitas, Havana, to meet the family of her then-boyfriend, Cuban model Ojani Noa, with whom she would marry just a month later.
The content creator JSant TV posted the video and within a few days it amassed over one million views, 70,500 likes, and more than five thousand shares. In the material, the TikToker travels to Jaimanitas, locates the yellow house where JLo stayed, and speaks directly with Ojani Noa's sister, who experienced those days firsthand.
The arrival was a complete surprise. The family was expecting a New Year's package, and instead, Ojani and Jennifer appeared in person. "My brother was going to send a package for New Year's on December 31, and it turned out that the package was them," Ojani's sister recounted in the video. She was outside with the neighbors when one of them told her that her brother had arrived: "When I walked into my house, Jennifer López was sitting in the living room having coffee with milk and bread because they had just come from the airport."
JLo stayed for ten days in that house in Jaimanitas, a coastal community west of the Playa municipality. The reason for the trip was clear: “They were getting married on February twenty-fourth of nineteen ninety-seven, and she wanted to meet her future husband's family,” explained Ojani's sister, who also recalled that her brother had not been able to return to Cuba for about seven years.
The most iconic moment from that time was captured in a home video that circulated on the internet years later: Jennifer Lopez trying to ride a Carpati motorcycle through the neighborhood streets. It was Ojani's sister who invited her to take a ride. "That motorcycle belongs to my dad, a Carpati, and then I told her let's go for a ride, and she immediately got on with me," she recounted. The issue was that the motorcycle kept stalling — "the only one who could ride it without it stalling was my dad" — and the father had to push them. They barely traveled a hundred meters before returning.
In January 1997, Lopez was an up-and-coming actress but not yet the global superstar she is today. She had starred in four films, including Anaconda, but her big leap to fame was about to happen: Selena, the biopic about the Texan singer Selena Quintanilla, would premiere on March 21, 1997, weeks after the wedding and the visit to Cuba. "She was here for ten days and she wasn't that famous at that time," recalled Ojani's sister.
Ojani's sister, who was 21 years old when she met Jennifer, showed the TikToker a photo album from that time and remembered her fondly: "It was as if she had been coming to Cuba her entire life."
Ojani Noa and Jennifer Lopez got married on February 22, 1997, but the marriage lasted only 11 months; they divorced in 1998. Nearly three decades later, that café con leche in a room in Jaimanitas remains one of the most intimate and least known chapters in the life of one of the world's most famous artists.
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