Selena’s Brother, A.B. Quintanilla, Is in a “Beautiful Place” in His Life
Learn about A.B. Quintanilla, his first wife, his current love life, and his career as Netflix streams the new drama ’Selena: The Series.’
Feb. 18 2021, Updated 12:51 p.m. ET
Selena’s family is in the spotlight these days with the release of Selena: The Series — especially because the Netflix drama spends a lot of time with the Tejano music superstar’s brother, A.B. Quintanilla, and his first wife, Evangelina Almeida.
Since the timeframe of the series, A.B. has married another four times. And he seems especially smitten with his current wife, Anjelah Quintanilla. “You changed my world to a beautiful place!” A.B. wrote on Instagram in September 2020, marking the couple’s one-year wedding anniversary. “Te amo mucho, baby! Happy anniversary, my love!”
With Selena: The Series currently streaming, we’ve rounded up more details about A.B., his career, and his love life.
A.B. Quintanilla with wife Anjelah
A.B. was 24 when he married his first wife.
A.B., born Abraham Isaac Quintanilla III, was 24 in 1988 when he married Evangelina Almeida in Corpus Christi, Texas, according to Hola! magazine. (In the Netflix series, The Purge actor Gabriel Chavarria plays A.B., while Criminal Minds’ Gladys Bautista portrays Vangie.)
Following his marriage to Evangelina, A.B. married Heather Grein in 2003, Brenda Ramírez in 2004, Rikkie Robertson in 2011, and finally Anjelah in 2019, the magazine reports.
He says the Netflix series shows the family’s humble beginnings.
In a recent Nothing Beats Experience interview, A.B. says Selena: The Series presents a more truthful version of the Quintanilla family’s history — and the time before Selena became famous — than the 1997 Jennifer Lopez movie did.
“This series, it’s going way back in time … to where I slept on the floor for a year,” he said. “It was one bedroom. It was my dad, my mom, and then Selena would sleep on the other side of my mom."
A.B. continued, "And the thing about it is, [we] were living with 13 people and one bathroom. 13 people, one bathroom. You know what I’m saying? And it was a very small house. The thing is, that those were a lot of hard knocks. In the Selena movie, it was like, ‘Hey, we’re #1!’ It didn’t happen like that. That’s not reality.”
A.B. became a music star in his own right.
A.B. played bass and provided backing vocals for Selena y Los Dinos, the family Tejano band — and after Selena’s death in 1995, he continued his music career by creating the group Kumbia Kings. The group released four studio albums between 1999 and 2004 and won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Tropical Regional Mexican Album in 2006 for their album “Kumbia Kings Live.”
“I like to make concept albums,” A.B. told MusicWorld in 2015. “The album has to take the listener somewhere. It has to take the audience on a voyage. I try really hard to make albums that get you from the first song and take you to the last song. I treat the project like you’re going to a concert to see a live performance.”
He honors his “awesome” sister.
A.B. reflected on Selena’s legacy in the MusicWorld interview, saying, “I had an awesome and beautiful sister that touched many hearts. She’s more important than what I am.”
He went on: “I was asked during a recent interview about what I felt most comfortable doing. My comfortable job was making the hits for Selena. My job was to be the guy in the shadows. That’s the guy I liked being. Now I have to be the voice for her to make sure her legacy continues.”
