Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are divorcing after 25 years of marriage, the couple announced Wednesday.
“We want to make people aware of a development in our lives,” tweeted Bezos, the world’s richest person. “As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separate, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends.”
He continued: “We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.”
The 54-year-old sits at the top of Forbes world’s billionaires ranking, with a real-time worth of $137.4 billion.
It’s unclear if the couple has a prenuptial agreement.
They reside in Washington state, which is a “community property state” — meaning divorcing couples without a prenup split assets 50-50, TMZ reported.
The Bezos own five homes in Medina, Washington, Beverly Hills, Van Horn, Texas, DC and Manhattan — making Jeff the 25th biggest landowner in the nation, Business Insider said.
The couple met in New York at hedge fund D.E. Shaw when Jeff, the company’s vice president, interviewed MacKenzie for a job, according to Business Insider.
MacKenzie, a Princeton graduate, landed the gig as a research associate and the two office neighbors fell in love — fast.
MacKenzie, who was 23 at the time and made the first move by asking Jeff out to lunch, was smitten.
“My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh,” she recalled in a 2013 interview with Vogue. “How could you not fall in love with that laugh?”
Within three months, they were engaged and, three months later in 1993, they were hitched.
Jeff also gushed about his longtime love.
“I think my wife is resourceful, smart, brainy, and hot, but I had the good fortune of having seen her résumé before I met her, so I knew exactly what her SATs were,” he told Vogue.
In 1994, the newlyweds quit their Wall Street jobs and moved cross country to Seattle, where Jeff launched Amazon. He hired MacKenzie as an accountant — as one of the online bookstore’s first employees.
“To me, watching your spouse, somebody that you love, have an adventure — what is better than that?” MacKenzie told CBS.
The couple went on to have four children.
MacKenzie, 48, is an award-winning novelist who penned the “The Testing of Luther Albright” in 2005 and “Traps” eight years later.
At Princeton, where Jeff also attended, she studied under legendary author Toni Morrison, who told Vogue that she was “one of the best students” she ever had.
Last year, Jeff and MacKenzie launched the homeless charity Day One Fund together.
In his statement on Wednesday, he hinted that he and his soon-to-be ex-wife would continue working together.
“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 ventures and adventures,” Jeff wrote. “Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.”
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 9, 2019
Source: Page Six