Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife of 25 years divorced in July 2019, six months after a Seattle-area judge finalized the split
“We want to make people aware of a development in our lives.”
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife Mackenzie Bezos announced in a joint statement on January 9, 2019, that they are ending their 25-year marriage. In a statement posted on Bezos’s twitter account, the couple said: The couple really wanted everyone to know that they are staying friends.
“After a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” the statement read. “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.”
Mackenzie Bezos announced that her divorce was a foregone conclusion, saying she was “looking forward to the next phase as a co-parent and friend.”
In January, The National Enquirer reported that Jeff Bezos was having an affair with Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor. Shortly thereafter, the National Enquirer published “sleazy text messages” from Bezos to Sanchez and claimed to have seen “a bunch of yellow selfies” sent by the Amazon CEO.
The couple met before Amazon was founded in 1994.They got engaged within three months of starting dating and married within six months. They have been married for 25 years and have four children.
Mackenzie and Jeff first met in 1992 at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund. Jeff was the first person in the company to interview Mackenzie. He is also a Princeton graduate. Mackenzie is the research assistant and Jeff is the vice President. In 2013, he joked, “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,”
When Mackenzie got a job, she and Jeff became office neighbors. “I’ve been listening to that wonderful laugh all day,” she told Vogue. “How could you not love that laugh? “Mackenzie offered to take Jeff out to lunch. They were engaged within three months and married within six months in 1993
Soon after, Jeff told Mackenzie about his revolutionary idea for an online bookstore. She said that while she was not a “businessperson,” she could hear “passion and excitement” in his voice when he talked about the idea. She told CBS, “Watching your spouse, somebody that you love, have an adventure — what is better than that, and being part of that? “Mackenzie went on to become an accountant at Amazon, one of the company’s earliest employees. She was reportedly in charge of negotiating Amazon’s first shipping contract at a Barnes and Noble bookstore。
The couple announced their divorce in 2019 after 25 years of marriage and four children.
Mackenzie Bezos will receive $38.3 billion in Amazon stock, making her the 22nd richest person in the world and the fourth richest woman, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Amazon said in an April 2019 filing that 4 percent of its outstanding shares, or about 19.7 million shares, would be transferred to Mackenzie Bezos once the couple’s divorce was granted.
The 49-year-old novelist vowed to give half her fortune to charity.
Jeff Bezos remains the richest man in the world, with a net worth of more than $120 billion, according to the Bloomberg tally. His 12% stake in Amazon is worth more than $114 billion. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates followed with $107 billion.
L ‘Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the world’s richest woman, with a net worth of more than $56 billion. Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, and Jacqueline Mars, who owns a third of the candy giant Mars Inc., are the world’s second – and third-richest women, respectively.
2. Rupert Murdoch and Anna Murdoch Mann
While the accuracy of that figure is disputed, Rupert Murdoch’s second wife, Anna Torv (now Anna Mann), is widely reported to have acquired a divorce settlement of $1.7 billion after the couple’s 31-year marriage ended, most of it in shares of News Corp. Rupert and Anna married in the 1960s and lived together for 32 years. They had three children, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, before splitting in 1998.
Mrs. Mann, born Anna Torv, who was brought up in humble circumstances in Glasgow in 1944 to a dry cleaner and merchant seaman. She first joined the Murdoch stable when she was an ambitious 18-year-old on the Sydney Daily Mirror.
The divorce was finalized in June 1999. Just 17 days after the divorce became final, the media mogul married a woman 38 years younger, Wendi Deng, the Chinese-American actress and businesswomen, on his 155-foot yacht in New York Harbor in 1999.
After her 1998 divorce from media Zeus Rupert Murdoch, Anna Murdoch Mann likened her emotional state to “coming out of a deep mental illness.”
She described her state of shock at the divorce, her wish not to appear as a victim and her feeling of “coming out of a deep mental illness”. She also detailed how she was unceremoniously dumped by News corp. as a non-executive director of her once-adored partner despite reports of an amicable breakup. In 1998, she helped the partner win a papal knighthood.
She said: “I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I loved died a long time ago. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him. But the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way.”
She did say she didn’t want any of their three children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, who all occupy important media positions, to take over the News Corp international empire from their father, claiming there would be “heartbreak and hardship” over the succession.
Murdoch and Trov appeared to have been happily married for 31 years. They had three children, and Trov was a novelist by profession. But as New York magazine’s Steve Fishman reports, Anna wanted Rupert to quit his job and retire with her, which Murdoch believes could kill him.
However, Anna reportedly began to suspect Murdoch had a girlfriend. Although Mr. Murdoch insists that he did not become romantically involved with the intelligent and beautiful Wendi until after their split, the couple married just 17 days after Torv and Murdoch’s divorce was finalized.
“I think that Rupert’s affair with Wendi Deng – it’s not an original plot – was the end of the marriage. His determination to continue with that. I thought we had a wonderful, happy marriage. Obviously, we didn’t,” Anna said.
Mr. Murdoch divorced Anna, his wife who has 31 years relationship with him, and also the mother of three of his children, before promptly dismissing her from the board of directors of News Corporation. And though many believe Ms. Mann was entitled to a larger stake of Murdoch’s then $7.8 billion fortune she left the divorce with a mere $200 million–a drop in the Murdoch bucket, but then again a $6.25 million apartment sale is a similar drop in her $200 million bucket.
Six months after the divorce, Murdoch forced Torv to leave the News Corp board, according to the Australian Women’s Weekly. “Anna’s support has been enormously helpful to me in what I must admit is a demanding and turbulent career,” Murdoch said in the News Corp annual report.
Mrs. Mann also claims that she was forced off the board of News Corp. “I wasn’t given a choice. I was told,” she told Leser. “Well, there’s no point being there if you’re no use and it’s embarrassing to everyone else on the board. And my children were involved, too. My son was on the board. Lachlan. So I thought it was better to be dignified and resign.”
Ms. Torv officially resigned and left the office to have lunch with her future husband, William Mann, a Wall Street financier. She describes her new husband as very different from her last, saying that he is a gentle and spiritual man who she believes won’t let her down, and they do many things together.
3. Alec Wildenstein and Jocelyn Wildenstein
Billionaire businessman Alec Wildenstein and Jocelyn Perisse met when she was a guest at Ol Jogi Ranch in Kenya. They were married in 1978 and divorced 21 years later. For 13 years, Jocelyn received $2.5 billion in addition to $100 million a year. Their two-year divorce proceedings received widespread media coverage.
Jocelyn Wildenstein was born as Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset on August 5, 1940, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Little is known about her middle-class upbringing in Switzerland except that she was the daughter of a struggling department store buyer.
At the age of 17 her life changed — she started dating Swiss movie producer Cyril Piguet. She told New York magazine that after two years they moved to Paris together. “My life changed then,” she said. “Lausanne is very plain, but I began meeting exciting, glamorous people.” Her life as a socialite has allowed her to move in elite circles around the world. She met Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi — pictured here with his wife — because of her love of hunting. He introduced her to her future husband, Alec Wildenstein, in Africa.
Wildenstein and a friend met Alec while hunting in Kenya in 1977. Alec Wildenstein comes from a family of art collectors and racing experts. “On their first day together, they rode motorcycles to a hilltop and shared their first kiss.” she told Vanity Fair. This is Alec’s brother Guy on the left, at the Monet exhibition.
On April 30, 1978, Alec and Jocelyn eloped in Las Vegas. But at their second wedding ceremony in Lausanne afterward, Alec’s father, Daniel, was absent. “He was against marriage in general,” Alec Wildenstein told Vanity Fair. “My father checks things out. My father tried to warn me.” They eventually went on to have two children, Diane and Alec Jr.
After one year of marriage, Jocelyn started to use her wealth for extensive cosmetic surgeries. She and Alec got “his and her eyelifts.” According to a number of biographies, she continually changed her appearance to look more “feline.”
According to the Daily Mail, she spent £2 million on surgeries to please her husband, who loved big cats. She kept a Lynx as a pet, telling Vanity Fair “the lynx has perfect eyes.” Alec Wildenstein told Vanity Fair: “She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.”
In 1997, Ms. Wildenstein said, she found her husband in bed with Yelena Jarikova, a 21-year-old Russian model, which led to an altercation in which Alec allegedly pointed a gun at Jocelyn and spent a night in prison. Alec left Jocelyn that year and divorce proceedings began immediately.
Divorce was a hassle. It took for two years. Ms. Jocelynn had been rumored to have worked as a prostitute for Madame Claude, the Paris brothel owner, Mr. Alec told Vanity Fair.
According to details in a lengthy Vanity Fair story, Alec cut off Jocelyn’s phone and credit cards, cut her $150,000 monthly allowance to $50,000 and fired her accountant, which led to a feud between Alec and the children.
The press coverage of the case was bad for Jocelyn, which centered on her looks. Tabloids dubbing her “The Bride of Wildenstein” and “Catwoman.” In response, she hired a Republican campaign adviser and consultant, Edward Rawlings, to handle her public relations. Eventually, Jocelyn received a $2.5 billion divorce settlement and $100 million a year for the next 13 years. However, the judge ruled that she could not use her divorce money for further cosmetic surgery.
In 2001, Alec inherited half of his father’s business empire, worth an estimated $10 billion. It includes one of the largest private collections of art in the world. The money helped him pay alimony. However, seven years later, Alec died at the age of 67.
After the divorce, Wildenstein kept a low profile and rarely appeared in public. The only time she was photographed was at a fashion show by her French designer boyfriend Lloyd Klein. He designs clothes for music artists such as Nicki Minaj and Pink. They started dating in the early 2000s.
However, in December 2016, their relationship came to an abrupt end after a violent fight between the pair erupted in her apartment.
Now, this New York City socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein was once worth billions — but now her fortune has vanished.
Wildenstein, whom the New York City tabloids dubbed “Catwoman” because of her unusual feline look, filed for federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May. According to The New York Post, she listed her Citibank account balance as $0 in the filing. The 77-year-old Switzerland native says she’s now getting by on just $900 a month in Social Security payments.
“I am not employed, and my only income is Social Security,” Wildenstein said in an affidavit. “I often turn to friends and family in order to pay my ongoing expenses.”
4. Steve Wynn and Elain Wynn
In 2010, billionaire Steve Wynn agreed to transfer control of $741 million worth of his stock in Wynn Resorts Ltd., where he is CEO, to his wife, Elaine, as part of a divorce settlement.
Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn has revealed that his split from ex-wife Elaine Wynn may be the most expensive divorce in history. In what celebrity journalist Robin Leach called “one of the most pleasant divorces” he had ever seen between the rich and famous. Elaine Wynn, who had been deeply involved in the business, left with $955 million in stock.
Born Elaine Farrell Pascal on April 28, 1942. Steve first met Elaine while attending college. They eventually fell in love and got married on 29th June 1963. However, they got divorced in 1986. After five years of split, they remarried for the second time in 1991 and divorced for a second time in 2010. In the past, Elaine has spoken glowingly of Steve. “The man is brilliant,” she told Town & Country in 2016. “I had a prominent role to play in our businesses, but he was the risk taker and the visionary.”
Elaine and her then-husband co-founded and led Mirage Resorts from 1976 to 2000 before co-founding Wynn Resorts in 2000. She helped the company expand with the opening of Wynn Macau in 2006, and Forbes dubbed her the “Queen of Las Vegas” in 2015.
She and Steve have two daughters, Kevyn and Gillian, and seven grandchildren..
When Kevin was kidnapped in 1993 at the age of 26, the family faced a particularly frightening moment. Steve Wynn paid a ransom of about 1.5 million dollars. Hours after she was snatched, Kevyn was found in a car and covered up in the parking lot of the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Authorities arrested one of her kidnappers when he tried to repay the balance in a Ferrari he bought at a dealership in Newport beach, California. “I think the height of my admiration and respect and love for Steve centers on that episode,” Elaine later told the New York Times of her husband’s handling of the incident.
Steve Wynn had sex with British divorcee Andrea heather during his marriage to his wife of 46 years. He didn’t even keep their relationship a secret, and within a year he and Elaine were divorced. Yet she remained on the board of Wynn Resorts, she took up residence in a different villa at their Wynn-Encore property—both paying rent to the publicly traded company, in fact—and life seemed to carry on.
Steve Wynn reached a private settlement with a former employee in 2005, but the secret lingers. Steve and Elaine, both over 70, have been fighting for five years over Elaine’s ability to control her $1.6 billion stake in Wynn Resorts Ltd., the operator of casinos in Las Vegas and Macau.
In January 2018, the 77-year-old casino mogul was accused of sexual harassment by dozens of victims, including his former employees. The victim allegedly reported that Steve demanded nude messages and sex acts from them from time-to-time.
His former partner and wife, Elaine Wynn, also accused him of pursuing a manicurist at the Wynn Las Vegas resort and having sex with her. She also gave reporters the names of 150 women to investigate the claims.
As per various sources, Steve paid the manicurist a $7.5 million settlement as he failed to disclose the agreement to his broad of directors. He also denied all the allegations stating that they rose due to the legal process he was having with his ex-wife. Wynn resigned from his position as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee and stepped down as CEO of Wynn Resorts on 6th February 2018. According to Daily Mail, Wynn’s ex-wife Elaine has been accused of launching a smear campaign against him and also offering the woman a six-figure sum to accuse him of rape.
5. Dmitry Evgenievich Rybolovlev and Elena Rybolovleva
Dmitry Evgenievich Rybolovlev is the 165 richest people in the world, with a net worth of $8.5 billion, according to our latest list of billionaires. He is the 14th richest man in Russia. In 2015, a Swiss appeals court ordered Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to pay nearly $4 billion in damages to his ex-wife Elena Rybolovleva when they divorced.
It was destined to be the great divorce of the century. According to one of the lawyers, it is “the most expensive in history”. Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has quietly ended his six-year legal battle with his ex-wife Elena. He reached an undisclosed settlement with his ex-wife, Elena.
In fact, he said, when it comes to divorce, he doesn’t want it at all. (again, people must remember that he didn’t have a prenuptial agreement, so he has good financial reasons not to.) Before he became rich in finance and fertilizer, he met Elena (her lawyer didn’t call back) as a student cardiologist. This has never been an ordinary marriage with ordinary pressure. In the mid-1990s, Russia experienced the political turbulence after the reform and opening up. The success of his fertilizer company, Uralkali, means that he is the target of the government. Facing death threats, he moved Elena and their eldest daughter, Ekaterina, to Geneva; Dmitry then spent nearly a year in Russia, allegedly ordering the beating of one of his business partners. (he will be released… But neighbors in Geneva remember Elena having to tell them in stuttering beginner French, “He’s in prison for alleged murder.”
It’s not easy. Then he got out of the car and went back and forth between Russia and Geneva. In 2001, he and Elena had another daughter, Anna. Elena accused him of hiding assets — properties all around the world in trusts — and the case moved in and out of court.
When I met Rybolovlev, however, his face softened as he mentioned Elena. He raised the question on which they all agreed. It’s not that they don’t know. He told me they were close to a settlement, although at the end of the day, people close to the situation said it was a deal of chance: “A divorce like this is a bit like and M&A deal; it’s not done until it’s done.”
Litigation quickly became ugly. Rybolovlev reportedly received Elena’s divorce petition at a New Year’s Eve party in 2008, when his bank informed him that his assets would be frozen. Tired of his infidelity, her court papers reveal lavish yacht parties where her husband “young conquests with his friends, and other oligarchs.”. The lawsuit alienated Elena and her children, and in 2014 a Geneva court awarded her a whopping $4.5 billion after rejecting a multibillion-dollar settlement.
Elena was awarded $4.5 billion by a Swiss court in May 2014 as part of a messy and public divorce battle that began in 2008.After the divorce that year, she accused her husband of keeping her assets out of reach by transferring them to overseas trusts. These assets include from Donald Trump to buy $95 million worth of Palm Beach mansion, located in the Central Park West the value of a record $88 million in New York penthouse, and the Greek islands of Scorpios and Sparti that once belonged to Athina Onassis (bought in 2013 for a reported $150 million).
So now it’s all over, at least on paper. As anyone who has ever been divorced knows, a mix of emotions lingers relief, bittersweet sadness and optimism. But I also happen to know that the story is not over for this complex, grudgingly high-profile family.