Billionaire Bill Gates admitted that he’s “cheerful now” but revealed that his divorce from Melinda French Gates after 27 years of marriage is “the mistake I regret the most.”
“The divorce thing was miserable for me and Melinda for at least two years,” Bill told The Times of London on Saturday.
The Microsoft co-founder had hoped his marriage to Melinda would be as successful as his parents Bill Sr. and Mary, who lived together for 45 years.
“There is a certain wonderfulness to spending your entire adult life with one person because of the memories and depth of things you have done and having kids together,” Gates said.
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Bill said he would have to put the public divorce “at the top of the list” of his failures throughout his life.
“There are others but none that matter,” the philanthropist added.
The couple met in 1987 during a Microsoft sales meeting when Melinda was a product manager and Bill was the company’s CEO.
He reportedly asked her out on a date in a parking lot.
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They got married on New Year’s Day in 1994 and went on to share kids Jennifer, 28, Rory, 25, and Phoebe, 22
“When Melinda and I met, I was fairly successful but not ridiculously successful — that came during the time that we were together,” the 69-year-old said. “So, she saw me through a lot.”
In 2021, Bill and Melinda announced their divorce after secretly separating the year before, saying they could no longer “grow together as a couple in this next phase of life.”
“When we got divorced it was tough and then she made the decision to leave the foundation — I was disappointed that she took the option to go off,” Bill said.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world, changed its name to The Gates Foundation when Melinda resigned in 2024 a few years after the split.
Bill admitted that he “caused pain” to his family when “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie asked the tech leader if infidelity played a role in the divorce during a 2022 interview — but didn’t share too many details.
That same year, Melinda went on “CBS Mornings” and hinted that her then-husband’s working relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was also a factor in their split.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” Melinda said. “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified.”
When Melinda, 60, filed the divorce papers, Bill was worth $130 billion.
The couple did not have a prenup but they did have a “separation agreement” to lay out the terms of the split.
In 2023, Bill started dating Paula Hurd, a former tech executive at NCR Global and widow of Oracle CEO Mark Hurd.
Melinda went public with her boyfriend entrepreneur Philip Vaughn in October 2024.
“Melinda and I still see each other — we have three kids and two grandchildren so there are family events. The kids are doing well. They have good values,” Bill said.
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