Juhi Chawla on how husband Jay Mehta wooed her: ‘He sent me a truckload of flowers’

Actor Juhi Chawla secretly married business magnate Jay Mehta in 1996, when she was at the peak of her career. Just a few close friends and family members were in the know of the development.

In an interview with Rajeev Masand, Juhi opened up about why she kept her wedding with Jay under wraps initially. “At that time, you did not have the internet and you did not have cameras on every phone, so you could do it that way. I was just about established and doing well. That’s the time Jay was serenading me and I was afraid of losing my career just when I had kind of got there. I wanted to carry on and this seemed the midway,” she said.

When Juhi was shooting for Duplicate in 1998, she got the ‘horrific’ news that her mother Mona Chawla passed away in a freak accident. Jay became her anchor and helped her recover from the tragedy. “That was a very difficult time for me, because I felt I was going to lose everything I loved,” she said. Jay has seen his own share of tragedy; he lost his first wife Sujata Birla in a plane crash in 1990.

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Talking about how her love story with Jay began, Juhi revealed that their first meeting was even before she entered Bollywood. “That was briefly and with friends,” she said, adding that she lost touch with him once she started working in films. They reconnected a few years later, at a dinner party hosted by a friend, and got talking.

“From then on, everywhere I went, he turned up. Everywhere I looked, he was there with flowers and notes and gifts. Every day! On my birthday, I remember he sent me a truckload of red roses. I was like, ‘What do you do with a truckload of flowers?’ He really did all he could. After a year, he proposed,” she said.

Juhi and Jay have been happily married for almost two and a half decades now, and have two children – a daughter named Janhavi and son named Arjun – together.

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