In hindsight, one may wonder why Jenni didn’t devote herself to music full-time much sooner, given that she had all the key ingredients to pursue it: the voice, the record label, musicians, her father, credibility. But Jenni was a multifaceted woman. On the one hand, she was an educated businesswoman, and she had other options. On the other hand, she was a mother, and her children were always her first priority. She was not going to pursue anything that wouldn’t allow her to take good care of them.
And Jenni was a woman who wanted love. But in that area, she didn’t seem to have the best luck. Her relationship with her first husband, Trino, had been painful and problematic. Now, in the early nineties, Jenni had three children she was raising all on her own. It was an incredibly hard job, and, no doubt, a father for them would have been very welcome.
In 1995, Jenni met a man who seemed to be just perfect. One night, while out singing in a bar, she fell in love. Things started off great. In a 2003 interview with La Opinion, Jenni said that when she met Juan Lopez it was love at first sight. “Juan and I met on February 25, 1995, in El Farallon, in Lynwood,” Jenni remembered. “I was there to see a friend of mine sing. I wasn’t going to sing, but somebody asked me to get up and sing ‘La Chacalosa.’ So I got up on stage, and that’s when Juan noticed I was there.”
Lopez knew who Jenni was, and he took the opportunity to have a picture taken with her. But that wasn’t enough. When the show was over, he waited for her out in the parking lot, and asked her to have dinner with him. Jenni said no, but she did give him her phone number.
They started dating. But not long after, federal authorities arrested Lopez, charging him with trafficking illegal immigrants into the United States, and he was sentenced to six months in prison. Then Jenni’s musical career was just beginning to take off, as she continued selling real estate and recorded albums on the side. When Lopez was released in 1997, Jenni started dating him again, and soon she was pregnant. Jenni was in love, and she was happy. On June 9, 1997, Jenni Rivera married Juan Lopez, both deeply in love with each other. On October 3 of that year, their daughter Jenicka Priscilla Lopez was born.
Everything seemed to go along smoothly. But less than a year after they were married, her husband was unfaithful to her, and they separated. Still Jenni longed for a stable family for her children, and she decided to give their marriage another chance.
Jenni was in love with Juan, but she admitted in an interview with La Opinion that the problems between them began to surface after they had been dating for just three months. In spite of this, they were so in love they decided to stay together and get married.
“We couldn’t stay away from each other, in spite of our problems,” Jenni said in the interview. “We both forgave each other for many things because of the real affection we felt, and I always thought we could make it better. I fought hard for my marriage, and I wanted it to work.”
From 1999 on, her career began to grow. And with all that came with it, Jenni managed to balance her three roles as wife, mother, and developing artist. She did this for a few years, and on February 11, 2001, she had her fifth and last child, a son, Johnny Angel Lopez. And then her marriage really started to fall apart.