Jennifer Lopez Said Alex Rodriguez Clearly Wasn’t Aware Their 1st Date Was a Date

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez began dating in 2017. On their first date, she knew it was a date, but he did not.

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez went on their first date in 2017. While she was certain they were on a date, he wasn’t sure what to expect from their meeting. According to Lopez, this was clear to her given the topics he discussed.

Jennifer Lopez said Alex Rodriguez didn’t seem aware they were on a first date

Lopez and Rodriguez ran into each other in 2017, years after they met for the first time. Though Lopez said she was usually shy in situations like this, she approached him to say hello. Not long after, he called and asked her out.

“He was sitting there in his white shirt, very confident and manly, but then he was just so talkative!” Lopez told Vanity Fair. “I think he thought I was going to be this loud person, but I’m not. I just listen. So he’s talking, talking about his plans, about how he had just retired from baseball, about how he saw himself getting married again, all these things you wouldn’t normally talk about on a first date. I don’t know if he thought it was a date.”

Rodriguez confirmed that he didn’t know if they were on a date. He wasn’t even sure if she was single.

“I didn’t know if it was a date,” Rodriguez said. “Maybe we were seeing each other at night because of her work schedule. I went in uneasy, not knowing her situation.”

The tone of the night shifted when he realized they were on a date

Rodriguez thought that no matter what Lopez’s intentions for the night were, it would be beneficial to meet with her.

“It would be incredibly productive for me to sit with one of the smartest, greatest women in the world, especially for a guy like me who is coming through tough times, rehabbing himself, re-establishing himself to folks out there,” he said. “I thought it would be a win-win no matter what.”

Eventually, though, Lopez told him she was single.

“She told me around the third or fourth inning that she was single,” he said. “I had to get up and go re-adjust my thoughts. I went to the bathroom and got enough courage to send her a text.”

Lopez laughingly recalled the text he sent. She said the whole night shifted once she received it, though not for the reasons one might expect.

“So I’m sitting there and he’s walking back, and I get a text. It says . . . ‘You look sexy AF,’” she recalled. “And then it took a turn. The fire alarm went off, and we had to evacuate … No, really. The fire alarm went off!”

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez said they had a lot in common

Before long, Lopez and Rodriguez were officially together. They said their relationship worked because of how much they had in common.

“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 added that their lives followed similar trajectories, even though their fields were different.

“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.”