JENNIFER LOPEZ and ALEX RODRIGUEZ endure the engagement from hell.
J. Lo One day after Alex Rodriguez’s marriage proposal, new claims he cheated on Jennifer Lopez emerge
Everything was perfect. On March 9, after two years of dating, Alex Rodriguez got down on one knee on a white sand beach in the Bahamas at sunset and asked Jennifer Lopez to be his wife with a flawless (and huge!) emerald-cut diamond ring. “When he proposed, she burst into tears of joy,” a source says. “She’d been waiting for this moment for well over a year.”
But just a day later, a dark cloud threatened to ruin J. Lo’s joy. A-rod’s onetime baseball rival, retired MLB star Jose Canseco, publicly accused the New York Yankees legend of being unfaithful. “He is cheating on her with my ex-wife Jessica,” Jose, 54, tweeted on March 10. “I was there a few months back with her when he called her on her phone. I am willing to take a polygraph to prove that what I’m saying about Alex…is 100 percent accurate.” Jennifer, 49, was devastated and “furious” about the widely broadcast claims, says the source: “It didn’t take long for all of J. Lo’s dreams of becoming Mrs. Rodriquez to turn into a nightmare. This has pretty much been an engagement from hell.”
CASTING DOUBT
She wanted answers. “Jennifer angrily confronted A-rod about whether there was any truth to the tweets. He immediately became defensive and shot down Jose’s allegations, accusing him of being a total liar,” says the source. Right now, Jennifer “is standing by her man and choosing to believe him,” adds the source. “But she isn’t stupid.”
J. Lo knows that marrying Alex, 43, means officially blending their families. And she would never want to set up their kids — her 11-year-old twins, Max and Emme, with ex-husband Marc Anthony, and A-rod’s girls, Natasha, 14, and Ella, 10, with his ex-wife, Cynthia Scurtis — for later heartbreak. “She’ll make sure she gets to the bottom of this latest scandal before walking down the aisle,” says the source. “After going through three divorces, she doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. She’s called off engagements in the past and isn’t afraid to end this one if she were ever to get solid evidence that A-rod was cheating.”
Men she’s loved have cheated before. In 2003, she claimed ex-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs “wasn’t faithful” during their two-year romance; third husband Marc was accused of infidelity while married to the singer, too. But even though ARod has been at the center of cheating scandals before (see box), Jennifer has faith. “She isn’t going to let some bitter, old rivalry between A-rod and Jose completely spoil her engagement,” says an insider. “She’s trying to handle this with grace.”