Who Is Ricky Martin's Ex-Husband? All About Jwan Yosef

Ricky Martin and Jwan Yosef decided to end their marriage.

The couple announced their divorce in July 2023 and reached a settlement agreement two months later.

"Our greatest desire now is to continue having a healthy family dynamic and a relationship centered on peace and friendship to continue the joint upbringing of our children, preserving the respect and love we have for each other," they said in a joint statement to PEOPLE.

The Puerto Rican superstar and the Syrian-Swedish artist first connected on Instagram in 2015 and began dating six months later.

"I saw him and I said, 'Oh my God. I am marrying him,' " Martin recalled of his first meeting with Yosef. "He's the most romantic man I've ever met."

They went on to get married in 2017 and have since welcomed four children together.

So, who is Ricky Martin's ex-husband? Keep reading for everything there is to know about Jwan Yosef.

He was born in Syria and grew up in Sweden

Though he grew up in Stockholm, Yosef was born in Syria and primarily identifies as Arab.

"There's this extreme urge to form a sense of identity around my heritage. I am in so many ways a Swedish person but in my core, I always come back to being Arab. It's something I've never wanted to or tried to avoid," he told My Kali, a pan-Arab magazine focused on LGBTQ stories, for a cover story in 2021.

He felt that his background was part of what drew Martin to him in the first place. "I think my husband married me because I'm an Arab man. My strongest attribute is that I am who I am," he said.

He studied art in Stockholm and London

After studying at the Pernby School of Painting in Stockholm, Yosef stayed local and received a bachelor of fine art from Konstfack University in 2009. He then earned his master's in fine arts in 2011 from Central Saint Martins in London, according to his website.

The artist has worked within those cities ever since, bouncing between Europe and Los Angeles. Yosef started working in the U.S. in 2018, with his first solo exhibit in the country taking place in Dallas.

He's a multimedia conceptual artist

Yosef is an accomplished painter and a conceptual artist who works with materials such as plastic and duct tape. He has participated in group exhibitions since 2007 and presented several solo ventures; his first solo show, "High Notes," was held at Stockholm's Galleri Anna Thulin in 2013, per his website.

Since then, he's been recognized for and won various awards for his work. In 2013, he took home the Threadneedle Prize for exhibiting artists in London and the Beers Contemporary Award for Emerging Art in London, according to Vogue Arabia. In 2020, Yosef won the Archiproducts Design Award for a series of rugs he designed inspired by his work with duct tape.

In November 2022, Yosef collaborated with Art D'Égypte to put on a temporary exhibit called "Forever Is Now .02" in Egypt, which featured three enormous limestone sculptures poking out of the sand near the Pyramids of Giza. By Dec. 17, 2022, the installation had already seen more than 850,000 visitors, as he revealed on social media.

Yosef opened a new studio in L.A. in early 2023 and gave his followers a brief tour of the space on Instagram.

He was raised in an "unconventional" and "open-minded" family

In his interview with My Kali, Yosef spoke about growing up queer in a religious family.

"I look fondly at my childhood. I was born in Syria, and immigrated to Sweden with my family in the 1980s, when I was 2 years old. My parents' marriage was an unconventional one back home in Syria, my mother being Christian and my father being Muslim," he revealed, noting that their relationship "set the tone for a pretty open-minded and unusual upbringing in Sweden."

Throughout his childhood, Yosef felt supported and loved by his family, despite some teasing at school.

"As a queer kid, I had a very safe space with my family, friends and at school," he added. "I was 'feminine' and went through the 'casual' teasing by other kids, but was generally supported and not really called out for being 'queerish.' My parents were very open-minded and played with me while I played with my dolls, never making me feel 'off' in any way."

He and Martin first connected on Instagram

The couple's relationship began on social media, where they first connected in 2015. Martin, an avid art collector, was fascinated by Yosef's work — and soon enough, with the artist himself.

"I'm scrolling and I see this beautiful piece of art and I'm like, 'Whoa, how cool! Who's this?' Then I start checking and all of a sudden I'm like, 'Ooh, ooh,' " Martin revealed on Radio Andy in 2017. "And then I wrote to him."

The singer added that the pair's relationship started out slow, noting that they got to know each other at a distance before meeting in person.

"Then we were talking for like six months without me hearing his voice," Martin told host Andy Cohen. "We talked about art — nothing sexy … I swear, nothing sexy. It was all about art and life in general. He used to live in London, [so] I went to London and I met him."

From there, the two began dating.

He and Martin made their red carpet debut in April 2016

Soon after their relationship began, the duo made their romance red-carpet official at the 2016 amFAR Inspiration Gala. The event was held in São Paulo, Brazil, where Martin and Yosef stole the spotlight as they posed for photos holding hands. The pair were dressed to the nines in black tuxes for the occasion, which marked their first official outing as a couple.

Martin confirmed their romance with a simple Instagram caption: "Yup."

Yosef also posted a photo from the event, writing that the two "cleaned up good" in the caption.

He and Martin got married in 2017

The couple secretly got married in 2017 after announcing their engagement the year prior. Martin shared the news of their union during an interview with E! News in January 2018.

"I'm a husband, but we're doing a heavy party in a couple of months," he told the outlet. "We exchanged vows, and we've swear [sic] everything, and we've signed all the papers that we needed to sign, prenups and everything."

He added, "It feels amazing! I can't introduce him as my fiancé. I can't. He's my husband. He's my man."

While appearing on the cover of PEOPLE's Pride Issue in 2021, the "Livin' La Vida Loca" singer said that he hoped his love story with Yosef would inspire others in the LGBTQ+ community.

"Every time I have the opportunity to, No. 1, talk about my family and let the world know that we're good people, and how we feel and love is really — I just want to normalize families like mine," Martin said.

He supported Martin's career

Yosef attended several events in support of Martin's career over the years, including the premiere ofThe Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.

"Proud beyond words," Yosef wrote alongside a photo from the red carpet. Martin replied in the comments: "I love you papi."

Martin later earned his first Emmy nomination for his role in the series, and Yosef attended the awards ceremony with him.

He and Martin share four kids

Martin and Yosef are proud parents of four kids: twin sons Matteo and Valentino, born in 2008, plus daughter Lucia, born in 2018, and son Renn, born in 2019.

"My kids ask me about having two daddies and I tell them we are a part of a modern family," Martin told Out magazine of their family in 2018. "This is a beautiful sense of freedom."

Over the years, Yosef has shared several glimpses of his and Martin's little ones on social media as well. In one 2019 clip, he shows off his shirtless dance moves for baby Lucia.

He and Martin are raising their kids to be multilingual

Martin and Yosef, who both speak multiple languages, are determined to pass down their linguistic flexibility to their four children.

"We speak Spanish at home, but they also speak English and French," Martin shared during a 2013 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, noting that his twin sons were enrolled in a French school. "I want them to be exposed to everything."

Yosef, meanwhile, is teaching their two youngest kids Arabic as well. "The way I bring up my babies is that I focus on Arabic rather than English or Swedish," he told My Kali. "I taught my kid how to count to 10 in Arabic and she's only 2, which is wonderful."

He supported Martin after the sexual abuse case brought against him was dropped

In July 2022, Martin was accused of domestic abuse and issued a restraining order under Puerto Rico's Law 54, known as the Domestic Abuse Prevention and Intervention Act. The law protects the petitioner's anonymity from release by authorities, but Spanish media outlet Marca later reported that his nephew had filed the complaint.

Martin denied the accusations, and the star's accuser later asked to have the entire case thrown out; the restraining order was dismissed by a judge in Puerto Rico later that month.

Shortly after the case was thrown out, Yosef quickly showed his support for his husband in a since-deleted Instagram post. "Truth Prevails ❤️," he wrote alongside a selfie of the couple.

Martin also spoke out publicly about the allegations, saying in a statement: "Thank God [these] claims were proven to be false, but I'm going to tell you the truth. It has been so painful. It has been devastating for me, for my family, for my friends. I don't wish this upon anybody."

He and Martin announced their divorce in July 2023

In a joint statement shared with PEOPLE, Martin and Yosef announced their decision to divorce after six years of marriage.

"We have decided to end our marriage with love, respect and dignity for our children and honoring what we have experienced as a couple all these wonderful years," they said. "Our greatest desire now is to continue having a healthy family dynamic and a relationship centered on peace and friendship to continue the joint upbringing of our children, preserving the respect and love we have for each other."

In August 2023, Martin opened up about the divorce in an interview with Telemundo Puerto Rico.

"This didn’t just happen. We’ve been planning this situation for a long time now — pre-pandemic," he said. "When the public found out, we had already been through a solid process of grief. We knew this had to happen for our own good and for the well-being of our children. We’re better than ever."

That same month, the exes reached a divorce settlement agreement.