Selena Quintanilla-Pérez’s widower is looking back at his life with the Queen of Tejano music.
Three decades after the “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” singer’s tragic death at age 23, her husband Chris Pérez—whom she wed in 1992—gave a rare glimpse inside his late wife’s rise to stardom.
“Selena was always going, always on,” he said in E! News’ exclusive clip from the upcoming Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos, “and I think road life started to become pretty busy, pretty hectic.”
But rather than softening her workload, Selena set her sights on fashion and costuming as a new creative outlet.
“Doing the designing was something that made her happy,” Chris, 56, recalled in the doc. “She would set some time aside—quiet time. She would have her sketch pads and she would start going to town.”
Selena’s hobby soon came full circle as an integral part of her performances. As Chris—the lead guitarist in her band—pointed out, “Some of our outfits that we wore onstage were drawn by her.”
In the years since Selena was shot and killed by her former fan club president Yolanda Saldívar on March 31, 1995, Chris has worked with the Quintanilla family to keep the Grammy winner’s memory alive—though they haven’t always seen eye-to-eye.
In December 2016, Chris was sued by his father-in-law Abraham Quintanilla Jr., who sought to stop production on a TV series based on the musician’s 2012 memoir To Selena, With Love. Ultimately, the project never moved forward, and Chris and Abraham “amicably resolved” the matter nearly five years later.
“Now that these issues are behind us,” Chris said in a post on X in September 2021, “my hope, and the hope of the Quintanilla family, is for us to work together to continue to honor and celebrate the legacy of Selena.”
Selena y Los Dinos premieres Nov. 17 on Netflix. Until then, keep scrolling for a look back at the singer’s extraordinary life in photos.