Who Is Jeff Bezos' Wife? Details About Their 25-Year Marriage (And Impending $137 Billion Divorce)
The Bezos announced their divorce on Twitter.
instagram Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie announced their divorce in a joint statement released on Twitter.
“As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” Jeff wrote.
The Amazon CEO and his wife had been married for 25 years after tying the knot in 1993.
Despite Jeff and Mackenzie’s seemingly amicable divorce statement, there is one point of contention: Jeff’s Amazon fortune.
In July 2017, Jeff officially took the title of the richest man in the world, but this divorce may very well slash his net worth in half.
According to TMZ, it appears the two did not sign a prenup when they married in 1993 — Jeff did not earn his first million until 1997, four years later. TMZ reported that, since they live in Washington where assets accrued over the course of a marriage are split evenly, without the existence of a prenup, they’ll split assets 50/50.
However, Jeff isn’t the only successful half of their relationship, and despite their divorce, is likely Mackenzie will do just fine on her own.
Who is Jeff Bezos’ soon-to-be-ex-wife Mackenzie? Here’s what we know.
1. They worked together.
The former couple first met in the early 90’s when Jeff interviewed her for a research associate position at a company where he was senior vice president.
According to Jeff, before hitting it off with Mackenzie, he was a “professional dater” looking for “someone resourceful.” Jeff told Wired in 1999 that he would ask friends to set him up on blind dates. "I'm not the kind of person where women say, 'Oh, look how great he is,' a half hour after meeting me,” Jeff explained. “I'm kind of goofy...it's not the kind of thing where people are going to say about me, 'Oh my God, this is what I've been looking for!'"
However, that goofiness may have worked out for Jeff in the end as Mackenize told Vogue she fell in love with his laugh almost instantly.
“My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh,” she said.
2. They married six months after their first date.
In an interview with Vogue, Mackenzie explained that she made the first move in an attempt to start a relationship with Jeff by asking him to lunch — apparently exactly the resourcefulness the future Amazon CEO was looking for.
The couple got engaged after three months and married just three months after that, when Mackenzie was 23 years old.
3. She’s an award-winning author.
While Jeff may have a more entrepreneurial spirit, Mackenzie was successful in her own right through the creative outlet of writing. Mackenzie attended Princeton, where she studied fiction writing under the Pulitzer Prize-winning Toni Morrison, who told Vogue that Mackenzie was “one of the best students [she’s] ever had in [her] creative writing classes.”
Mackenzie went on to author two fiction novels, The Testing of Luther Albright (for which she won an American Book Award) and Traps.
In her interview with Vogue, Mackenzie surprisingly revealed that she was not an Amazon author despite supporting her husband’s efforts.
“We are calling her the fish that got away,” Jeff told Vogue.
4. They have four children together.
Over the span of their 25-year marriage, Jeff and Mackenzie became parents to four children who are now in their teens: a daughter, who they adopted from China, and four sons.
“Family is very important to Jeff, and he absolutely relies on [Mackenzie] to create that stable home life,” Danny Hillis, a close friend of the Bezos, told Vogue. “They are such a normal, close-knit family, it’s almost abnormal.”
Despite their marriage coming to an end, in their statement, Jeff and Mackenzie revealed that they planned on remaining tight-knit as a family.
“We’ve had such a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing adventures and projects,” Jeff wrote. “Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.”
Micki Spollen is a YourTango editor and entertainment news writer. She also runs the travel blog Where In The World Is My Drink.