Inside Anna Kournikova and Enrique Iglesias’s ultra-private romance: From intercourse life, to marriage thriller and the way she REALLY feels about him kissing followers 

Even when a chronic back injury brought her tennis career to a premature conclusion at the age of 21, Anna Kournikova still had the world at her feet. 

The profile and marketability of a player whose off-court celebrity eclipsed even her distinguished sporting achievements, which included a Wimbledon semi-final and a career-best  ranking of eighth in the world, promised innumerable opportunities as a model, broadcaster or any of the many lucrative avenues one of the world’s most recognisable women might have wanted to pursue.

With tens of millions in the bank and a celebrity boyfriend in Enrique Iglesias, the Spanish pop star she met while filming a music video in late 2001, Kournikova was a ubiquitous, global presence – with or without a racket in her hand.

What few would have anticipated is that, 22 years on, a player once described as a ‘one-woman international conglomerate’ would have retreated so fully from public life that even her marital status remains a matter of conjecture.

What is known, if only through a combination of intermittent glimpses and rare public pronouncements, is that Kournikova and Iglesias remain very much an item.

But what might have been carefully cultivated as a celebrity romance for the ages –  think the Posh and Becks of the tennis world – has instead been very much a family affair.

Though both household names – Iglesias, whose father Julio is also a world famous singer, has been dubbed ‘the King of Latin pop’ and has almost 19 million Instagram followers  – they have done a remarkable job of maintaining their privacy. 

In an era when date nights and family snaps routinely become fodder for social media, it is a rare feat – all the more so when you consider how Kournikova’s early celebrity was bolstered by her ubiquity online. A child of the internet age, Kournikova has long since flown the nest. 

The couple have three children, fraternal twins Lucy and Nicholas, born in December 2017, and Mary, who was born in January 2020. Notably, Kournikova chose not to highlight either of her pregnancies beforehand, only publishing photographs on social media after her children were born.

In fact, the 43-year-old’s social media activity hints at how motherhood has reshaped her priorities. An Instagram timeline once peppered with modelling shots and pictures of her dogs is now reserved for more occasional posts focusing on her family.

Children reshape the priorities of every parent, of course, yet Kournikova always had a broader outlook, however little it might have been acknowledged amid the relentless focus on her looks and perceived lack of on-court success (a risible charge for a player whose achievements included wins of Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport, all former world No 1s, as well as two grand slam doubles titles and the No 1 doubles ranking).

‘I will only play the game for as long as I’m having fun,’ she said at the age of 15. ‘It is important to realise that tennis is not the only thing that matters in life.’ 

The lower back condition that eventually ended Kournikova’s career – ‘It could be hereditary or training at a young age or too much tennis or bad luck, they just don’t know’ said Phil de Picciotto, her agent at the time – only hardened that precocious perspective.

Another pearl of wisdom, this time from 2008, when she was 27: ‘Why are people afraid of getting older?’ said Kournikova. ‘You feel wiser. You feel more mature. You feel like you know yourself better. You would trade that for softer skin? Not me!’ 

Those sentiments, and Kournikova’s gradual retreat from the public eye in the years following her retirement in 2003, offer a stark contrast with the highly public, hypersexualised manner in which her relationship with Iglesias first came to the public eye.

That came in the video for Escape, the title track of Iglesias’s 2001 album, which reached number three in the UK singles charts and showed Kournikova initially resisting the singer’s advances before things ended in a more passionate key.

By the time the couple attended the MTV music awards eight months later, they were making no obvious effort to conceal their relationship, and by 2004 rumours were rife that they had married. More than two decades on, their status on that front remains as clear as mud.

In 2007, Iglesias told a Swedish newspaper the couple were divorced – ‘I am single now, but that’s OK, I don’t mind being alone’ – only for his comments to be dismissed subsequently as a joke.

‘I’m never getting married,’ Kournikova declared the following year; ‘I always try, but she pays me no attention,’ Iglesias countered a few days later. 

Things have continued in similar vein ever since, with the couple’s stance perhaps best articulated by Iglesias in a 2012 interview with Parade magazine.

‘I’ve never really thought marriage would make a difference,’ said Iglesias. ‘Maybe it’s because I come from divorced parents, but I don’t think you love someone more because of a piece of paper. 

‘And nowadays, it’s not taboo to have kids and not be married. What makes a difference is that you’re a good parent, period.’

If that offered an indication of the couple’s priorities, it was one trailed by Kournikova the previous year, when she told Women’s Health magazine: ‘I absolutely want to have children, whether I have my own or adopt.’

‘[Marriage] isn’t important to me,’ added Kournikova. ‘I’m in a happy relationship – that’s all that matters. I believe in commitment. I believe in being open and trusting each other.’

That trust extends to Iglesias’s habit of kissing fans during live performances, even when his Moscow-born partner is present. 

‘Anna will be at one of my shows and I’ll do that,’ Iglesias told SiriusXM’s FYI show last year. ‘I like getting close up. 

‘A lot of times she [says], ‘Man, I always get this look from some of the girls… and they’ll ask, “Are you OK with it?” [And Kournikova replies]. “Yeah, I’m totally cool, he’s onstage. He’s embracing his fans.”‘

No less illuminating were the remarkably candid revelations Iglesias made about the relationship in 2018, 10 months after the birth of the couple’s first children.

‘It’s probably more sex now than ever,’ he said. ‘The sex has not diminished. 

‘Like any couple, you still go through your ups and downs and it’s not always perfect. But it is perfect in a way. It’s incredible to watch her be such a great mother.’

As evidenced by the furore that greeted this week’s release of pictures showing a wheelchair-bound Kournikova in the Miami coastal resort of Bal Harbour, the couple’s fame has been no less enduring than their relationship. 

That may even be the secret to their longevity, for both are inured to the glare of publicity – even if Kournikova has learned to shun the paparazzi.

‘Girls look at him, guys look at me,’ she once reflected. ‘It goes with the job. But it gets annoying when you feel violated – just take the picture.’

Having escaped the goldfish bowl of professional tennis, Kournikova finally appears to have the life she always wanted – however much it differ from the one once anticipated by the outside world.