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J.Lo and A-Rod share how romance began: 'I don't know if he thought it was a date'

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez spilled all the details of their adorable first date.
/ Source: TODAY

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez may be one of the hottest power couples around, but even they had butterflies on their first date.

In fact, their relationship almost didn’t get off the ground because when they bumped into each other in Beverly Hills last year, J.Lo felt nervous about making a move. She had met Rodriguez briefly years ago, but hadn’t spoken to him since.

“I almost yelled out ‘Alex,’ but I am the shyest person when it comes to things like that,” the singer and actress, 48, admitted in an interview with Vanity Fair for the magazine’s December issue. “I could literally just have walked away.”

Mario Testino exclusively for Vanity Fair

Luckily, though, she overcame her nerves, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey.” A-Rod called her later that afternoon, and she agreed to have dinner with him in a few nights. Even then, though, Rodriguez wasn’t entirely sure if it was a date or just a friendly meet-up.

“Maybe we were seeing each other at night because of her work schedule,” the baseball legend, 42, told Vanity Fair. “I went in uneasy, not knowing her situation.”

During the dinner, he dealt with his nerves by being extra chatty.

“He was sitting there in his white shirt, very confident and manly, but then he was just so talkative!” Lopez said, revealing that the former baseball star told her all 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. I thought it was a date,” Lopez added. “He was nervous, and it was really cute.”

Finally, after Lopez hinted that she was single, Rodriguez went to the bathroom and sent the singer a text, telling her she looked sexy.

The rest, as they say, was history. Lopez and Rodriguez have been basically inseparable since then, and after a few months of quiet dating, they made their public debut as a couple in May.

Despite all the photo ops and headlines surrounding their romance, "J-Rod" have managed to stay grounded. It helps that they are both relentlessly driven and insanely busy. When he’s not running his successful real estate company, Rodriguez is an investor on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” and Lopez, as usual, has about a million projects going on, including starring in the cop drama “Shades of Blue” and judging NBC’s “World of Dance.”

Both in their 40s, they have many other things in common. They are both parents: Lopez has 9-year-old twins, Max and Emme, from her marriage to Marc Anthony, and Rodriguez has two young daughters from his previous marriage. They've also both overcome plenty of challenges, from J.Lo’s earlier breakups playing out in the tabloids to Rodriguez’s suspension from Major League Baseball for using performance-enhancing drugs.

Going through all these intense ups and downs, and often in the public eye, only brought them closer together, Lopez told Vanity Fair.

“I understand him in a way that I don’t think anyone else could," she said. "And he understands me in a way that no one else could ever."

All together, now: Awww!