Kobe Bryant Met Wife Vanessa While Rapping on a Single by Tyra Banks — a Look Back at Their Love Story

Although he’s best known as a basketball legend, Kobe Bryant’s love story with his wife Vanessa began in an unexpected way: through his brief foray into rap.

In the first episode of CNN’s new three-part docuseries Kobe: The Making of a Legend, Kobe’s loved ones recall his time as a rapper and how it led him to his wife.

“Kobe went through a period of his life where he wanted to be a rapper, and he did it,” his former assistant Elissa Grabow says in the series. “He did a single with Tyra Banks called ‘K.O.B.E.’ “

Kobe reflects on his passion for rap in an old video seen in the docuseries. “It probably started in ninth grade,” he says. “Had an English teacher who used to make us write poetry.”

In 1999, while filming the music video with Banks, 21-year-old Kobe, then a rising star with the Los Angeles Lakers, had no idea he was about to meet his future wife. “I tapped on her shoulder, she turns around and I said, ‘Excuse me, what’s your name?,’ ” Kobe recalls in a resurfaced interview where he talks about his first encounter with Vanessa, who was working as an extra on the set of the video. “She said, ‘Vanessa’ and my eyes got real big.”

Vanessa, who was just 17 at the time, quickly became Kobe’s whole world. “When he came back in the trailer, he said, ‘I just met the girl that I’m gonna marry,’ ” Grabow recalls. “She was everything to him. She stopped going to high school because it became problematic, Kobe rolling up. I remember he had this white Mercedes Benz and I was like, ‘You’re going to her high school.’ “

Explaining what made Vanessa so special to Kobe, Scoop Jackson, a sports journalist and long-time friend of the NBA star, says she filled a void in his life at the time: “Nobody at home is really relating to him. He’s got a disconnect with his team because he is too young and they think he is arrogant, and Vanessa is very receptive to hearing him and taking him for who he is presenting himself to be. That had to be a feeling of euphoria for Kobe.”

Six months after they met, the couple got engaged, and they married in April 2001, less than a year later.

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Four daughters and nearly two decades later, on Jan. 26, 2020, their love story was tragically cut short when Kobe, then 41, and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna were killed in a helicopter crash that also claimed the lives of seven other people.

“This pain is unimaginable, [but] you just have to get up and push forward,” Vanessa told PEOPLE in March 2021. “Lying in bed crying isn’t going to change the fact that my family will never be the same again. But getting out of bed and pushing forward is going to make the day better for my girls and for me. So that’s what I do.”

On Jan. 22, Vanessa announced she will be releasing a book titled Mamba & Mambacita Forever to honor Kobe and Gianna. “What emerges is the story of a man who became even more than he himself could have imagined, an avatar of determination, discipline and competitiveness,” reads the press release shared with PEOPLE. “He was also a worldwide icon, one of the greatest athletes of our time, a man committed to his family and to fatherhood.”

Episode 1 of Kobe: The Making of a Legend will premiere Jan. 25 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and will be available to stream on demand to CNN subscribers on Jan. 26. The next two episodes will air on Feb. 1 and 8.

Source People.com