Kobe Bryant and Vanessa Bryant’s Relationship: A Look Back at Their Romance (Exclusive)

Kobe Bryant and Vanessa Bryant were together for more than two decades before his death in January 2020

Kobe Bryant and Vanessa Bryant had a love story for the ages. The late NBA legend met his future wife when she was just 17 years old. At the time, Kobe was a starting player on the Los Angeles Lakers — while Vanessa was a high school senior from southern California. Their paths crossed coincidentally when Vanessa worked as an extra on a music video of Kobe’s, and a whirlwind romance ensued. The young couple were engaged within six months and married less than a year later, in April 2001.

“For me, it was very different to have somebody that I was so close to, because I had been so used to growing up in isolation, really,” Kobe said about the early 2015 days of relationship in the 2015 Showtime documentary Kobe Bryant’s Muse. “But now, being in Los Angeles and feeling like I’m going to be a Laker for the rest of my life, I just met this beautiful woman that I just see the world the same way with.”

It was “love at first sight” Vanessa echoed in a November 2020 Instagram post. Their love story continues continued for the next two decades, with the couple welcoming 4 daughters — Natalia, Gianna, Bianka and Capri — over the years. And when the five-time NBA champion retired from basketball in 2016, Kobe was most looking forward to being able to spend more time with his wife and daughters.
That time together would be tragically cut short. On Jan. 26, 2020, Kobe and his daughter Gianna were killed in a helicopter crash that also claimed the lives of seven other individuals.

“This pain is unimaginable [but] you just have to get up and push forward,” she 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.”

From their first meeting to how their love lives on today, here’s everything to know about Kobe and Vanessa Bryant’s romance over the years.

They met on the set of Kobe’s music video in 1999

In the summer of 1999, Vanessa — then a 17-year-old high school student from Orange County, California. — was recruited to appear in hip hop music videos, per the Los Angeles Times With her mother chaperoning her on set, she worked as a backup dancer or extra in music videos for artists including Snoop Dogg Krayzie Bone and the hip-hop group Tha Eastsidaz. Then, in November 1999, Vanessa was hired to appear in a music video for Kobe — who, at the time, was working on his debut hip-hop album.

“For those that don’t know, yes, I had a budding music career as a rapper,” Kobe recalled in Kobe Bryant’s Muse. “It didn’t last long, but I did make a video. On the video set is where I first met Vanessa.”

Kobe, who was 21 at the time, was immediately smitten with Vanessa, he revealed in the documentary.

“It was a two-day video shoot, and I was always looking for her, like I wanted to know where she was. I would finish a take and go to my trailer but I would wonder where she was the entire time,” he remembered. “Then I would come out of the trailer and just wanted to talk to her some more, in between takes and stuff like that.”

In November 2023, Vanessa shared a throwback photo of her and Kobe from that video shoot on her instagram, commemorating the 24th anniversary of the day they first met.

“24 years ago…. Day 1. #1999 👑❤️ 11/27/99,” she captioned the sweet snapshot.