Before she married one of Latin pop’s biggest names, Maritere Vilar was already working inside Miami’s Latin music world. In 1993, she was the choreographer on Gloria Estefan’s music video for “Buen Amor” — a track from Mi Tierra, the album that won the Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album that year. She was not a guest at that production. She was running movement on it.
That is where the Maritere Vilar story actually starts.
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A Career Built Before the Marriage
After the Mi Tierra project, Vilar joined Estefan Enterprises in Miami Beach as an assistant to music executive Frank Amadeo — the company managing both Gloria Estefan and a rising Cuban-born singer named Jon Secada.
The two met in 1994 through that shared professional world. Their first proper meeting, according to Jon Secada’s official biography, was a blind date arranged by mutual contacts. By May 1995, they were together.
On February 22, 1997, Maritere Vilar and Jon Secada were married at the Little Church of the Flower in Coral Gables. She was 24. He was 33. The Sun Sentinel ran the story the following morning.
Marriage, Family, and Life in Coral Gables
The Secadas have lived in Coral Gables ever since, in a 7,284-square-foot home near the University of Miami — the same institution where Jon earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music.
They have two children:
- Mikaela Nina Secada — born February 15, 1999
- Jon Henri Secada — born July 8, 2002
Jon Henri maintains a completely private life. His sister took a different road entirely.
Mikaela Secada: Broadway Actress and Recording Artist
Mikaela Nina Secada, now 27, is an Afro-Cuban American actress, singer, and dancer based in New York City. Born and raised in Miami, fluent in both English and Spanish, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre.
Her regional stage credits before Broadway include:
- Nicola in Kinky Boots at Bucks County Playhouse
- Carla in In The Heights at MTWichita
- Consuelo in West Side Story
- Elle Woods in Legally Blonde
- Productions at The Kennedy Center and Barrington Stage Company
In August 2023, she made her Broadway debut as Jennifer Parker in Back to the Future: The Musical at the Winter Garden Theatre — part of the original cast and the closing cast, running through the show’s final performance on January 5, 2025. The production ran 597 performances and received two Tony Award nominations. She has also appeared on television in The Endgame and Lioness.
Jon Secada, Mikaela, and the “Unforgettable” Duet
While Mikaela was still performing in Back to the Future on Broadway, Jon Secada was deep in production on Fascination — a Nat King Cole tribute album built alongside Gonzalo Rubalcaba, the multi-Grammy-winning Cuban jazz pianist and composer.
Most of the album had already been recorded when Jon decided he wanted to include one more song. He called Mikaela. She traveled from New York to Miami to record what became the album’s most personal moment: a father-daughter version of “Unforgettable” — their first professional collaboration.
Jon, speaking to Yahoo in September 2025, described it as “a very special moment” and said he felt genuine pride watching Mikaela work as a full professional in the studio. Mikaela, in a separate interview, said Broadway had given her the confidence to step into that session as a collaborator in her own right rather than simply his daughter.
Gonzalo Rubalcaba, the album’s pianist and producer, said the chemistry between Jon and Mikaela in the studio was immediate.
Fascination was released on August 29, 2025.
On September 30, 2025, Maritere Vilar appeared alongside Jon and Mikaela after a segment of Good Day New York in New York City — one of the few times all three have been photographed together at a media event.
Three Generations of Cuban Music
The Secada family’s musical roots go back further than most coverage acknowledges.
Jon Secada is the nephew of Moraima Secada (1930–1984), one of Cuba’s most celebrated vocal artists. Known to fans as “La Mora,” she was a founding member of the Cuarteto D’Aida alongside Omara Portuondo and Elena Burke — a group that defined the filin genre, Cuba’s deeply emotional style of jazz-influenced song, across the 1950s and 60s.
Mikaela has spoken publicly about her great-aunt with real admiration. In an October 2025 interview, she said she was drawn to the music of the Cuban vocal divas of that era and named Moraima specifically as an artist she hoped to honour through her own recordings.
The lineage, laid out plainly:
| Generation | Name | Role in Cuban-American Music |
|---|---|---|
| Great-aunt | Moraima Secada | Filin singer, Cuarteto D’Aida, 1950s–60s Cuba |
| Father | Jon Secada | 3x Grammy winner, 20 million albums sold worldwide |
| Daughter | Mikaela Secada | Broadway actress, University of Michigan B.F.A. |
Maritere Vilar has been at the center of this family across all of it.
Cuba, Community, and the Rally for Democracy
In July 2021, when mass anti-government protests broke out across Cuba, Maritere and Jon stood together at the Rally for Democracy at the Freedom Tower in Miami alongside other Cuban-Americans showing public support for the protesters. Getty Images and Shutterstock Editorial both photographed the couple there.
Their Cuban-American identity has never been something kept only in private life.
Life in Coral Gables: Private, Present, and Still Active
Jon Secada joined the faculty of Florida International University’s Wertheim School of Music in January 2025 — the latest chapter in a career that has consistently connected performance with education.
Maritere Vilar holds no known public social media presence and has given no known solo media interviews. What is on the public record — the Sun Sentinel‘s 1997 wedding report, Jon Secada’s official biography at jonsecada.com, Getty editorial archives spanning nearly 20 years of public appearances, verified press releases from BroadwayWorld and Peermusic, and the IBDB credits for Mikaela — puts together a consistent picture.
She arrived in the Latin music world on her own professional credentials. She has been part of its most significant Cuban-American family story for 29 years. And in 2025, with her daughter recording at her father’s side and appearing with both parents on national television in New York, Maritere Vilar was exactly where she has almost always been — present, connected, and largely on her own terms.
