In recent news, the world’s wealthiest couple of Bill and Melinda Gates have officially called it quits after 27 years of marriage. The news of the divorce was first announced via both Bill’s and Melinda’s social media handles.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 3, 2021
The couple was termed as one of the wealthiest couples in the world having a joint net worth of nearly $130 billion. Through their tremendous wealth and influence, the couple had focused on charitable work and philanthropy. According to both Bill and Melinda, they will continue their work together on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation but will no longer be a couple for the next phase of their lives.
The couple first met in the 1980s when Melinda had joined Microsoft as a Product Manager. The two sat together in a causal business dinner in New York around 1987. According to Bill in a Netflix documentary called ‘Inside Bill’s Brain’, he mentioned that his wife was “truly an equal partner” while Melinda had described Bill as “funny and very high-energy”. However, as they began dating, Bill mentioned:
“We cared a lot for each other and there were only two possibilities: either, we were going to break up or we were going to get married.”
The couple had gotten married in 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. From then on the couple introduced the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 in Seattle and since then the Gates have been prominent figures in ensuring global healthcare, eradication of poverty, accelerating education worldwide, and working on new ways to bring about climate change through the latest technological advancements. Moreover, their foundation had invested nearly $54 billion over the last two decades to eradicate malaria and control diseases across the globe especially in the more remote and backward areas.
The foundation had been extremely dedicated towards the research for the vaccination for COVID-19 by funding $1.75 billion to vaccine initiatives. The foundation had made their relationship better where she stated the following in her book called ‘The Moment of Lift’:
“He’s had to learn how to be an equal, and I’ve had to learn how to step up and be an equal”
As of now, both Melinda and Bill have requested the public to allow them to have space and privacy so they can both navigate their new life.
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