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Ben Affleck’s Ex Katie Cherry Is ‘Not Surprised’ About J. Lo Engagement: ‘He Was Looking for Love’
Supportive exes! Ben Affleck’s ex-girlfriend Katie Cherry reacts to his engagement with fiancée Jennifer Lopez in an exclusive interview with In Touch.
“I think Ben and J. Lo’s engagement is really, really great,” the film composer says. “It’s so exciting. I knew it would happen! I’m so happy for him. He was looking for love.”
While she and the Way Back actor didn’t work out, Katie has no ill will at all over her ex-boyfriend and the Marry Me actress, noting she is “not surprised at all about the engagement.”
“It’s kind of nice that they’ve got back together after so many years and having been through it all,” Katie adds. “It’s like they’re meant to be! Ben was definitely looking for love, and it seems like she was too.”
Katie and Ben met on the dating app Raya in 2019, she previously told In Touch. Their romance later fizzled out once Ben and actress Ana de Armas sparked dating rumors in March 2020.
When it comes to his second chance at love with the Selena star, Katie feels that Ben “just wants to settle down and be with someone forever.”
“Hopefully it will last, unlike so many other Hollywood couples, but I think having already tried it once [being engaged] and it didn’t work — and now they’re more mature, and they’ve been through so much individually — that is probably the recipe for success,” she adds. “He and J. Lo are so much older and wiser now.”
As for the “Jenny From the Block” artist’s stunning $6 million engagement ring, Katie thinks it’s “really pretty.” And when asked if the Good Will Hunting cowriter was ever that generous to her, she reveals he “never really bought me anything, but I feel for him, for them” and points out that “the money doesn’t really matter, and if it came from his heart, that’s all that really matters.”
“Ben has a big heart,” she adds.
J. Lo and Ben first met on the set of their 2002 film Gigli, and they were engaged by the end of that year. Though they eventually split in 2004, the exes-turned-lovers remained amicable and pursued relationships with their respective ex-spouses: Marc Anthony, with whom J. Lo shares twins Max and Emme Muñiz, and Jennifer Garner, with whom Ben shares children Violet, Seraphina and Samuel Affleck.
After nearly 20 years of being apart, the famous duo started dating again after J. Lo broke off her engagement with ex-fiancé Alex Rodriguez in April 2021. One year later, the “On My Way” pop star announced her and the Argo actor’s second engagement on April 8 in a video that was published to her newsletter, “On the JLo.” Just four days later, J. Lo described how her “beautiful love” proposed to her while she was taking a bath.
“[I] just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that this was happening all over again,” she wrote in her piece, “How It Went Down,” adding, “I was quite literally speechless, and he said, ‘Is that a yes?’ I said, ‘YES of course that’s a YES.’”
For Ben’s ex-wife’s part, an insider exclusively told In Touch on Monday, April 11, that their kids “are a bigger priority to her than Ben and J. Lo’s engagement,” and added that she “is used to watching Ben jump in at the deep end, so I wouldn’t say she’s shocked about the engagement.”
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