Lisa Padilla Harris
Wife: Jimmy Jam (Music Producer)
Marriage was the last thing record producer James (Jimmy Jam) Harris ever expected to do. But when he met video wardrobe stylist Lisa Padilla, he knew he had met his soul mate. "[Lisa is] like someone I've known all of my life," he says. "Everything was very easy, very natural for us."
The reason it was easy, Harris says, is that neither he nor his wife placed unrealistic goals on their relationship. "We didn't put a bunch of expectations on being married, like somehow that was going to make everything better. It was already as great as it could be," he contends.
Both Jimmy Jam and his wife say they have witnessed their share of failed marriages and that this only reinforces their desire to make their own union work. But marrying into stardom can get complicated, Lisa Harris admits. "We do have this charmed, wonderful life. But it's a big responsibility. It's not as free-spirited as it might look," she says, speaking from their 14-room, lakeside Minnesota mansion. "It takes a lot of work."
Jimmy Jam, who produces the likes of Janet and Michael Jackson, Johnny Gill and Ann Nesby of The Sounds of Blackness along with his partner Terry Lewis, works long, night hours--something his bride says she was well aware of before their four-year courtship led to marriage. Yet she thought marriage might change that. "i knew he worked nights. I used to go with him and fall asleep on the sofa," she says. But after marriage, she recalls getting to the point of saying, "'I need to be in bed because his working schedule never ends.'"
But whenever possible, Lisa Harris says, she supports her husband and his business. "He's the franchise, the musical genius here," she says resolutely. "Anything I can do to help, I do."
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