/ Updated By Daniela Franco 
 
 The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro, said in her first-ever interview that she fears for the life of her husband and has not seen him since he was recaptured on January 8. 
 
 The exclusive Telemundo interview between Coronel Aispuro and Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández aired on Sunday, in a news special titled “The Queen of El Chapo.” 
 
 Coronel Aispuro is a former beauty queen who was born in California and holds dual citizenship. El Chapo reportedly met her in 2006, when he was around 50 years old and she was 17. They married in 2007 on her 18th birthday. 
 
 Coronel Aispuro questioned the conditions her husband is living in at the Antiplano prison, claiming the Mexican government is responsible for El Chapo's health. 
 
 A Telemundo promotional photo for its interview with Emma Coronel Aispuro. Telemundo News 
 
 “I fear for his life [El Chapo’s]. We don’t know if he is eating well. We don’t know what his situation is because we haven’t seen him,” she said. 
 
 Telemundo Video: La Esposa del Chapo Habla Por Primera Vez En Exclusiva 
 
 “They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell,” she said in the interview, which was produced in association with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley (IRP). 
 
 “Not everything people say is true... I think that all human beings have the right to have at least the basic things — they are not giving that to him,” she said. 
 
 A Telemundo promotional photo for its interview with Emma Coronel Aispuro. Telemundo News 
 
 Coronel Aispuro also spoke about Kate del Castillo and her relationship with El Chapo, as well as about her family life and El Chapo's relationship with his twin daughters. 
 
 Related Article: El Chapo's Wife Gives Birth in California Hospital 
 
 On Friday, journalist Anabel Hernández appeared on Telemundo's "Al Rojo Vivo con María Celeste" to talk about the Telemundo News exclusive. She revealed that the interview took place February 12th in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. 
 
 "This is an interview that I have been going after for a very long time; I’ve been investigating the life of 'El Chapo' for 15 years,” she told host María Celeste Arrarás. "Emma [Coronel Aispuro] thanked me for the interview but I also thanked her because this is an interview to understand the circumstances around this whole ordeal." 
 
 Hernández says that Coronel Aispuro willingly answered all the questions she had. "I asked her what she says to people that consider that 'El Chapo' Guzmán is a dangerous criminal, and she says that to her, Joaquín Guzmán is just her husband, not 'El Chapo'," she said. 
 
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 / Updated By Dareh Gregorian 
 
 "El Chapo" won't get his hug. 
 
 A federal court judge in New York has denied Joaquin Guzman's request to hug his former beauty queen wife before opening arguments in his drug trafficking trial next week. 
 
 Guzman, whose nickname translates to "Shorty," faces life in prison if convicted. 
 
 In a letter to the judge presiding over the case earlier this week, one of his lawyers asked "that Mr. Guzman be allowed to give his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, a brief momentary greeting to include perhaps an embrace" before the proceedings begin. 
 
 In his ruling Thursday, Brooklyn federal court judge Brian Cogan said he was "sympathetic to the request." 
 
 "As defense counsel points out, defendant’s conduct during what are surely difficult proceedings and conditions of confinement for him has been exemplary, and he has displayed considerable grace under pressure," the judge wrote — but he added he had no choice but to deny it. 
 
 Cogan noted that he'd previously upheld the government's "restriction that prohibits defendant from communicating with or having any physical contact with his wife" in order to prevent the notorious drug lord "from coordinating any escape from prison or directing any attack on individuals who might be cooperating with the Government." 
 
 He added "the same concerns that warranted their implementation in the first place still exist today. If anything, this is especially true on the eve of trial, when the reality of the potential liability defendant faces if convicted may be setting in and his motivation to escape or threaten witness might be particularly strong." 
 
 Prosecutors say Guzman, who twice escaped from high security prisons in Mexico, was running "the largest drug trafficking organization world," and used murder, kidnapping and torture to maintain his hold on his Sinaloa Cartel. 
 
 He was extradited to the United States last year, and has been held in solitary confinement ever since. Guzman lawyer Mariel Colon Miro had told the judge that allowing Guzman a hug would be a "humanitarian gesture." 
 
 Guzman, 61, married Coronel Aispuro in 2007, when she was 18. She'd been crowned Coffee and Guava Queen in Sinaloa earlier that year.
– It's no surprise that Mexico is keeping a very close eye on drug lord Joaquin Guzman after recapturing him for the second time—but that doesn't mean his wife has to like it. In her first public comments about "El Chapo," beauty queen Emma Coronel says she fears he may not survive the "slow torture" of solitary confinement at El Altiplano, the prison he left through a mile-long tunnel last year. "They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell," Coronel says, per the Los Angeles Times. "They don't let him sleep. He has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom." The Telemundo interview with Coronel was recorded in Mexico in mid-February and aired Sunday night, NBC News reports. Coronel—who married Guzman on her 18th birthday eight years ago, when he was 50—has dual American-Mexican citizenship and gave birth to his twin girls in California in 2011. He is believed to have at least 17 other children. Coronel says she only saw her husband twice during his months as a fugitive last year. "He just wanted to have a nice time with his daughters," she says. "To be in peace." She claims to know little of Guzman's drug empire and says she has never seen him use drugs or violence. "He is like any other man—of course he is not violent, not rude," she says. "I have never heard him say a bad word. I have never seen him get excited or be upset at anyone." (When authorities closed in, Guzman temporarily escaped through a door hidden behind a mirror.)