Ricky Martin and Jwan Yosef to Divorce After 6 Years

Musician Ricky Martin and artist Jwan Yosef announced in a joint statement that they will divorce after six years of marriage.

"We have decided to end our marriage with love, respect, and dignity for our children and honoring what we have experienced as a couple all these wonderful years," they said in the statement, which they posted in Spanish and English on Instagram.

The pair have two young children together, Lucia (born in 2018, sharing Martin’s Christmas Eve birthday, in a sweet coincidence) and Renn (born in 2019), in addition to Martin’s 14-year-old twin boys Matteo and Valentino, whom he welcomed via surrogate and will continue to raise as a single parent.

“​Our greatest desire now is to continue having a healthy family dynamic and a relationship centered on peace and friendship to continue the joint upbringing of our children, preserving the respect and love we have for each other,” the statement continued.

Martin got his start in Menudo, a Spanish-language boy band, in the late ‘70s. He eventually branched out into a successful solo career and English-language pop music, as well as acting on-screen and onstage, notably in a Broadway revival of the musical Evita. Martin came out as gay in 2010, posting a message on his website that he was “a fortunate homosexual man.”

In 2012, Martin told Vanity Fair about his decision to publicly come out, saying that “the process started out of my need to be happy. And to have self-acceptance and self-respect. Like saying out loud: ‘This is me. It is part of my nature.’ . . . When I came out so many people came up to me and said, ‘Thank you. For the first time I was able to give my son a hug, since he came out and said that he was gay.’ I did it for me, but it also helps others.”

Martin and Yosef announced their engagement in 2016 and married in 2018.