Enrique Iglesias and Anna Kournikova are still lucky in love after 21 years — all thanks to the connection they formed while filming his “Escape” music video.
“[The video changed my life] in ways that I didn’t even think about,” the musician, 48, told People in an interview published on Thursday, October 26. “When we met — although she came from the sports world — in a way, we kind of got each other.”
When Iglesias filmed the video for “Escape” in 2001, the tennis champ, now 42, was cast as his onscreen love interest. When the cameras stopped rolling, Iglesias and Kournikova continued getting to know one another.
“She knew what my world was like. I kind of knew what her world was like. So that understanding helped a lot,” he recalled. “We just started connecting little by little and got stronger and stronger and stronger.”
Iglesias previously revealed during a 2001 episode of MTV’s Making the Video that he never met Kournikova before her music video cameo but asserted that he was a “big fan” of hers. “I’m sure a lot of guys want to meet her. I’m one of them,” he gushed at the time. “She’s beautiful, talented [and a] great tennis player, you know, and I’m sure she’s going to be great in the video.”
Iglesias and Kournikova went public with their romance in August 2002, but they still managed to keep their relationship relatively private.
“It’s not that tough [to stay under the radar],” Iglesias said on Australia’s Today Tonight in November 2011. “You’ve got to have a sense of humor. [There have been rumors] I’ve been married about 28 times, have kids all over the world. … I think I’ve got twins in Australia, in Perth. Truly, you just laugh at it.”
Iglesias and Kournikova went on to expand their family in December 2017, welcoming twins Nicholas and Lucy. Their youngest daughter, Mary, arrived in February 2020.
“When I pick them up from school and they’re having a bad day or one of them is crying or they’re fighting, we say, ‘Guys, what’s your favorite song?’ And then one breaks out into [my song] ‘I Like It,’ and then they all start singing it, and it’s so cute,” Iglesias gushed to People, noting that his little ones are big fans of his music catalog. “I’m just enjoying now. I’m enjoying every single day.”
However, when Iglesias goes out on tour, he misses Nicholas and Lucy, both 5, and Mary, 3, “a lot.” He told the magazine, “I feel like they’re still not old enough to go on the road with me [yet].”
