Until five years ago, Jeff Bezos’ personal life was like that: private. Actually wanted privately. The little press beyond the Salmon knew little about the existence of the founder of Amazon, now the third richest man in the world. The company shared his personal information in its communications: married, four children, lives in Seattle. But at the beginning of 2019, a divorce and a new romance turned her world upside down. And in these five years it has been shown that his relationship with Lauren Sánchez – who was first a friend’s wife, then a girlfriend, then a girlfriend, now a fiancée and, in a few months, a wife – is anything but a whim became the catalyst for his change in his life.
Jeff Bezos was so discreet that he bordered on seriousness and, for some, even solemnity. The only thing known about his friendly side was his laugh, which was so cackling and loud that it reached millions of views on YouTube and that Amazon employees could download it from the company’s intranet. But when his marriage to Mackenzie Bezos fell apart, his cloak of monastic simplicity also shattered. The austere millionaire, as he was called, without luxury cars, the cum laude engineer from Princeton who opened the world’s largest online bookstore in a garage with his partner, following the romantic narrative of the West Coast of the 2000s, disappeared. And he gave way to a man who evolved and began walking red carpets, gracing magazine covers and throwing huge engagement parties in Beverly Hills mansions.
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It’s true that Bezos’ business model has evolved, as has his career within it, and with it his character. Amazon became much more than just a bookstore, and the role of its creator was much more than that of a bookseller or the head of a company with a few employees: the company now has 1.5 million worldwide and is worth 143 billion. When it began breaking into the film and television market to glorify itself, so did its owners. In 2012, Jeff and Mackenzie made their first walk at the Met Gala, sponsored by their company. In 2017, they went to the seaside Oscars as producers from Manchester and even got a few jokes from ceremony host Jimmy Kimmel. But that’s it. You can now see him much more often at galas. His job is also different. He is no longer in charge of the empire because he handed over his position to Andy Jassy in mid-2021, which gives him more freedom to play with his image.
Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos, at the Metropolitan Museum gala in New York in 2012. Lars Niki (Corbis via Getty Images)
In January 2019 there was a divorce, which brought his $164,000 million (around €142,000 million) on the table. It took just three months to resolve the issue: Mackenzie Bezos (Tuttle, maiden name) retained $35 billion worth of Amazon stock; him with around 107,000, in addition to The Washington Post newspaper and his beloved space company Blue Origin. But then Bezos’s outlook began to change. Just a few weeks after their separation, the paparazzi caught him leaving a pizzeria in New York with Sánchez, a well-known television presenter in California, six years his junior, pilot and owner of a helicopter company and recently separated from the representative of the famous Patrick Whitesell (at his Wedding in 2005, everyone from Steven Spielberg to Ben Affleck was in attendance). And photographers haven’t stopped looking for it since.
They gave the hunt leeway. His life change was as spectacular as the 30-carat pink diamond Bezos gave his now-fiancée last summer aboard his ship Koru, which means “new beginning” in Maori. On the yacht, which is the largest in the world with three masts and 127 meters long and on which Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and Usher, among others, spent this holiday, the couple had dinner on deck one evening and returned to their cabin . She found the ring under the pillow. “I think I fainted a little,” Sánchez explained in Vogue this week. The American magazine devotes an in-depth report to her, which focuses on her but is set in the tycoon’s 1,600 square kilometer ranch in Texas and for which he was photographed – in images that have become a meme of the Internet – that’s the point of artificiality – in addition to making some perfect margaritas for both the respondent and the interviewer. Also speaks. From her, of course: “It helped me put more energy into my relationships: ‘Call your kids, call your dad, call your mom.’ “He is a role model to follow,” he says. “He’s the life of the party,” she says. “He’s extremely enthusiastic and extremely fun.”
A way of life and public presence that is very different, if not contradictory, to the tycoon’s relatively simple everyday life during his time in Seattle. Now everything has changed for him, including the city where he has lived for 30 years. In early November, he announced he was moving to Miami, where he purchased two adjacent villas in the exclusive Indian Creek area. This way, he will be closer to his parents, who also run the Bezos Family Foundation, and Cape Canaveral, Blue Origin’s operating base. And also about the parties he already gives and about the sea.
Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos on board the “Kura” in Portofino, Italy, in June 2023.MEGA (GC Images)
Until now, and due to their mutual divorce agreements and the care of their children (he has four, already university students; she, one of 22, who lives in New York, and two others, 17 and 15 years old), Bezos and Sánchez They lived between Seattle and Los Angeles, but spent extended periods at the ranch in Texas and spent time at millionaires’ residences in New York, Washington, D.C. and Maui. The capital Los Angeles has become the perfect backdrop for her new social life. They had a huge engagement party there last weekend. It was at the villa in exclusive Beverly Hills of a couple who are among his best friends: the couple founded by designer Diane von Furstenberg and Fox founder Barry Diller, who declared that Lauren was “the spark of life” . from Jeff: She enlightens him in the best way, she is his best encouragement.”
The party was the subject of tabloid news – although the photos from inside were also published exclusively by Vogue. Oprah Winfrey, Barbra Streisand, Salma Hayek, Robert Pattinson and Kim Kardashian were in attendance with her mother Kris Jenner (she and Lauren are good friends, they send a lot of private messages on Instagram, the reality star said in the same Vogue interview). It was the second party they threw, following a small, intimate party aboard the Koru attended by, among others, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio and Queen Rania of Jordan. All that is known about the wedding is that Sánchez is looking forward to taking her future husband’s surname. But still nothing about whether it will be in the US or Europe, about the guests or the dress. Details are not known, but it will not be discreet.