On April 3 2000, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine with the headline, “Madonna’s Surprise: I’m Pregnant.”

Here’s a snippet from the article inside People:

When British filmmaker Guy Ritchie dropped by his dad and stepmum’s London home last week, he didn’t waste time with small talk. “Guy just told us straight out,” recalls retired advertising executive John Ritchie. Guy said, “Look, I think I should tell you this: Madonna’s pregnant.”

And so the elder Ritchie, 71, and his wife, Shireen, a charity worker, found themselves at ground zero for the bombshell that the rest of the world would soon hear.

“We’re happy to confirm rumors that we’re expecting a child at the end of this year,” Madonna, 41, and her 31-year-old paramour said in a joint statement issued March 20 from London, where the singer and her 3-year-old daughter Lourdes (nicknamed Lola) share a rented town-house in tony Kensington, about a mile from Ritchie’s home.

The announcement ended rumors that had been swirling on both sides of the Atlantic for months: that Madonna wanted to repeat her favorite role yet—motherhood.

“Are you pregnant? That’s the question everyone wants to hear,” Matt Lauer bluntly asked Madonna in a March 3 Today show interview to promote her recent film The Next Best Thing, about an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant by her gay best friend.

Though her answer was a flat no, Madonna herself fueled speculation when she told an interviewer for Jane magazine earlier this year that she would like to have another child. “I think Lola should have a brother or sister,” she said. “I think she’s incredibly spoiled. She needs a bit of competition.”

And on March 17, Britain’s Mirror, tipped by paparazzi that Madonna had made repeated visits to a London women’s clinic, predicted that a formal announcement of the pregnancy was imminent. When it came, it was with an appeal for privacy. “This is not a public pregnancy,” says Madonna’s publicist Liz Rosenberg. “It’s going to be as private as she can keep it.”