Vanessa Bryant Revisits the Day She Met Late Husband Kobe Bryant in Anniversary Tribute

Vanessa Bryant is taking a trip down memory lane. 

The widow of the late Los Angeles Lakers legend, Kobe Bryant, took to Instagram on Monday to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the day their love story began. 

Sharing a nostalgic throwback photo of the couple’s first meeting, Vanessa captioned the post with a heartwarming message: “24 years ago…. Day 1. #1999 11/27/99.”

The couple’s initial encounter took place on the set of a music video in 1999 when Kobe was pursuing a career in music before rising to basketball stardom. Kobe had previously reminisced about those early moments in his 2015 documentary, Kobe Bryant’s Muse.

“It was a two-day video shoot, and I was always looking for her. Like, I wanted to know where she was,” Kobe recalled. “I would finish a take and then go to my trailer, but I’d wonder where she is the entire time and then come out of the trailer and just want to talk to her some more in between takes and stuff like that. And she wrote her phone number down at the time when you had to still write phone numbers down, and I called her the very next day. We talked for hours.”

The couple tied the knot in 2001 and continued to celebrate the anniversary of their first meeting throughout the years. One of their cherished traditions was revisiting one of their early date spots, Disneyland, often bringing along their daughters — Natalia, Gianna, Bianka, and Capri.

“On this day 20 years ago I met my best friend, my Queen @vanessabryant,” Kobe wrote on Instagram in November 2019. “I decided to take her on a date to Disneyland tonight to celebrate old school style (pre 4 princesses). I love you my mamacita per sempre.”

Kobe and Gianna “Gigi” Bryant tragically died in January 2020 when a helicopter carrying them, seven other passengers and the pilot crashed in Calabasas, California. There were no survivors.

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