Martita

Marta Rodríguez (born 1940), better known as Martita, is a coffee maker who became famous with the Latin American public in the United States and in some Latin American countries, when she was hired in 1998 by Univision to serve daily coffee to her co-workers Raul De Molina and Lily Estefan, during the transmissions of the "El Gordo y La Flaca" television show.

Rodríguez and her husband left Cuba after he spent time in jail there during the early days of the Cuban Revolution. They settled in New York, where she began to earn a living as a coffee maker. She has described the winters in New York as too cold and hard to get used to; Cuba is a Caribbean island and Rodriguez had never been under cold weather before arriving at New York.

During the 1970s, she moved to Miami, Florida. In Miami, she established a coffee stand close to the filming location of Univision.

In 1998, after being hired by Univision as an in-house coffee maker for employees and entertainers alike, she was asked by "El Gordo y La Flaca" producer María López if she was afraid of television cameras, because Lopez wanted Rodriguez in her show. Rodriguez answered that she wasn't, and soon enough, she began appearing on television on a daily basis.

During the early 2000s, she was recommended to write a book about her life by Don Francisco, who had Rodríguez as a guest in his Wednesday nights talk show. Her biography hit major American department stores in 2002.

Martita Rodríguez has served coffee to a large list of luminaries, apart from De Molina and Estefan. Among others, she remembers serving coffee to Ricky Martin and to Julio Iglesias.

On a September 2004 issue of People en Español, an article about Rodríguez was featured.

External links

• Martita on Univision - in Spanish