He married Vanessa, of Latin origin, with his father against him and overcame a serious crisis in his marriage after an accusation of rape
Kobe Bryant and the promise with his wife: never fly together by helicopter
Kobe Bryant, his life in pictures
Half the world has tried to imagine their anguish, to understand their pain. Last Sunday, on a gray and cloudy day in Los Angeles, he not only ran out of his life partner, but lost one of his four daughters, Gianna, 13, in a sinister wrecking in the hills from Calabasas, northwest of Los Angeles. After that halo of sadness that now marks her days and nights lies a woman who has taken a leading role she never sought: Vanessa Bryant.
She started talking about it in 2001, the day Kobe Bryant, the young Lakers star with only 20 years old, announced by surprise that she had engaged to a Latin girl from a Huntington Beach institute. The media fell on top of Kobe's "star" and so, suddenly, Vanessa Cornejo Urbieta entered the scene.
Details about her life and her origins, half Mexican and half Irish , a teenager with no apparent pretensions and a strong character that they hired to record music videos with Snoop Dog and her Eastsidaz group came to light.
When Bryant met her, they say that she sent her flowers constantly and was going to look for her when she left school. Monica Squadrilli, Vanessa's student and friend at the institute, remembers that she used to bring photos of Bryant to class and that people still didn't think she was with him. Until the couple announced that they were getting married on Vanessa's birthday, a wedding held at a Catholic church in a coastal town of Orange County, Dana Point.
The wedding was not attended by Bryant's father, Joe, a former NBA basketball player who spent years in Italy with his family and was against his son's choice because it was a Hispanic girl. "Once he has decided to marry, now is his life," he said then, helping to prolong a rocky relationship with his son almost until the end of his days.
Vanessa then gladly accepted the role of wife of the NBA star, attending many of the Lakers' games and other social events of the team despite her reserved nature. In January 2003, she gave birth to her first daughter, Natalia Diamante , and everything seemed to run smoothly. Until the complaint against Bryant for sexual harassment of a hotel employee in Colorado in 2003 came up.
Initially, Bryant denied having sex with the girl. He was convinced that he would lose his wife and his sponsors. Finally he admitted his mistake, although not that it was an attack or a violation. At his side, in that famous press conference in which the player apologized publicly, Vanessa remained by his side, supporting. "I love my wife with all my heart. It's my spine," he said of her.
Her decision to forgive her husband generated mixed reactions. There were those who applauded their decision to keep the family together in front of those who called it soft. It was not the first time that generated negative headlines, however. Before, he had a certain reputation for being distant with the women of other players and of being coarse at times. He also had a reputation as a manipulator. They called her the Yoko Ono of the Lakers for trying to divide the team.
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It was partly due to the incident with Karl Malone, which he accused of having spread with her during a game. That provoked a furious reaction from Bryant. But they continued as a couple, with a diamond ring valued at 4 million dollars as a gift of relief after infidelity. They even passed a divorce process that seemed irrevocable.
On Wednesday, the young widow took courage to share with the world what she is living. "There are not enough words to describe our pain right now," he wrote on Instagram. "We are completely devastated by the sudden loss of my beloved husband, Kobe, the amazing father of our children, and my beautiful and sweet Gianna, a loving, thoughtful and wonderful daughter, and an incredible sister to Natalia, Bianka and Capri."
He acknowledges that he will have to seek strength from where there is none to get his daughters forward, especially his baby, Capri, born in June last year. "It is the light that will illuminate our path," he wrote, one of the main reasons to get up every day.
Their relationship seemed to have been renewed after the crises. They had two more daughters, Bianka, three years old, and Capri, seven months old. The proof that they were going through a peaceful moment in their relationship after overcoming sour moments was left by the athlete himself in one of his last posts on social networks. He published in November an old photo of both of them in one of his first appointments on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of their relationship. "Today 20 years ago I met my best friend, my Queen @vanessabryant. I decided to take her on a date at Disneyland tonight to celebrate the old school style (before the four princesses). I love you my mamacita forever," he wrote . It was the great love of his life.
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