During the late 1980s, Cedeño would travel daily to San Juan, to participate in the daily stand-up comedy sketches shown at Telemundo Puerto Rico's mid-day variety show, El Show de Las 12. Soon after, he was hired to portray Chevy, el Ponzonu, a character that, just like him, also came from Ponce and who became a very popular character in Puerto Rico.
Cedeño after then appeared on the covers of such magazines as Vea, Estrellita, Teve-Guia, Artistas, and other popular Puerto Rican gossip magazines. While Cedeño was being successful on a professional level, his personal life was suffering, as his wife was in the middle of an adulterous relationship with another man. Eventually, she left Cedeño, and when Cedeño filed for divorce, this aspect of his personal life became of wide public knowledge, newspapers such as El Vocero and others covering the details of Cedeño's private life. Soon after Cedeño divorced his first wife, he found love with a popular television model, sex symbol Phaedra Michalzik, and they married around 1994. They remain married and Michalzik has publicly reiterated her love for Cedeño several times, saying that she feels their love will be eternal, among other things.
Cedeño's most infamous night came on September 15, 1992, when his personal friend, Héctor Camacho, invited him to sing, as Chevy, El Ponzonu the Puerto Rican national anthem before Camacho's Pay Per View world title challenge of Julio César Chávez in Las Vegas. Many criticized the choosing of Cedeño as the singer of La Borinquena, but he answered his critics by saying on magazines that he, at least, sang the song from his heart, whereas Mexican singer Vicente Fernández had to use a small paper with the words of the Mexican national anthem written on it, to sing that night.