Ben Affleck couldn’t be prouder of girlfriend Jennifer Lopez as the singer and actress accepted the Icon Award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards Tuesday night. As the superstar took to the stage to thank her fans for all their support over the years, her heartfelt speech was interrupted several times by the enthusiastic crowd’s cheering, including that of Affleck, who took to his feet for a standing ovation at points, accompanied by his son Samuel, 10, and Lopez’s daughter Emme, 14.
“I appreciate this so much, so very, very much,” Lopez, beaming down at the crowd, said during her speech. “I wish I could tell you that awards were the most important to me, but that’s not true. And don’t think that I don’t appreciate the shiny, sparkly things, because I do! I cannot lie, everybody knows that I do. But this isn’t why I do this. It’s not what matters most to me. I really do it for you guys.”
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“Because of you, I get to do what I love the most in life and that is the most wonderful blessing,” the Marry Me star continued. “That’s a gift that you give me and I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you to everyone who comes to a show, streams a song, sees a movie, follows me. You guys are the ones who give me the opportunity every day to live a life I couldn’t even imagine would come true when I was a little girl growing up in the Bronx.”
She continued: “You did that for me. You made that dream come true. I’m shaking! And I will always be grateful to each and every one of you for that. And I will never forget it, and I will never, ever take it for granted. So I want to say thank you to every one of you for believing in me when other people didn’t, even when I didn’t. Thank you for teaching me who I really am.”
Offering up her own definition for the word “icon” to wrap up her speech, the “Let’s Get Loud” singer said the word was actually an acronym for “I Can Overcome Negativity.” Despite being declared officially an icon, don’t count out Lopez in the future. “Let me tell you something else,” she told fans. “I’m just getting started.”