Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez not breaking up, but 'working through some things'

The couple, who have been dating for four years, put out a statement after rumours of a split began circulating on Friday

Jennifer Lopez and former baseball player Alex Rodriguez have denied reports of their break up. AFP 

Jennifer Lopez and fiance Alex Rodriguez are putting up a united front after rumours began to spread that the couple have called off their engagement. The pop star and former baseball player, who got engaged in 2019, released a statement saying they were “working through some things”.

“All the reports are inaccurate,” the couple, popularly known as J-Rod, said.

On Friday, celebrity news websites including TMZ and New York Post's Page Six reported that Lopez, 51, and Rodriguez, 45, had split.

"This has been a long time coming," one source was quoted by People magazine as saying. "They are tied in their business worlds, so it's not a cut and dry break up. It's taken a while for them to even think about untangling it all."

The couple were last seen together on March 1 in the Dominican Republic, where Lopez is filming Shotgun Wedding, a comedy-action film also starring Josh Duhamel.

After the couple, who began dating in 2017, released the statement denying a break up on Saturday, a source told People magazine the pair did talk about splitting, but that they have decided to work it out.

"They hit a rough patch," the source said, adding that rumours linking [Rodriguez] with a TV reality show star "had no bearing on the rough patch at all.”

"She's working in the Dominican Republic and he's in Miami, so it's tough seeing each other especially with quarantining and Covid," the source told People.

Lopez, who performed at US President Joe Biden's inauguration in January, said late last year the couple had postponed their wedding twice because of the pandemic.

"We had planned what we really, really wanted to do, [but] I don't know if we'll be able to recreate that," Lopez told Elle magazine in January. "We cancelled it, and since then we haven't really talked about it. There's no rush. We want to do it right when we can do it."

With additional reporting by Reuters