Bill & Melinda Gates announced their marriage of 27 years
has come to an end.
The couple shared the shocking news in identical tweets on Monday (May 3), announcing they are getting divorced while saying they will continue to work together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable foundation they co-founded together.
“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” the couple opens their statement saying. “We have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives. We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”
The couple first met when Melinda began working at Microsoft as a product manager in 1987. They would eventually get married in 1994 in Hawaii. Gates was Microsoft’s CEO until 2000 but eventually began to take a back seat in the company he started with Paul Allen back in 1975. He then decided to scale back his day-to-day role within the company in 2008, serving as chairman of the board until 2014.
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Last year
Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, shocked everyone when he announced that he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board to focus on philanthropy solely.
As you can imagine with the announcement of the couple divorcing, Twitter is jokingly (some probably serious) shooting their shot and sending hey big head tweets and other hilarity.
https://twitter.com/Kofie/status/1389335917798830081?s=20
LOL.
Bill and Melinda Gates are now the second most high-profile divorce coming out of Seattle following Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos, who finalized their divorce in 2019. Mackenzie has since remarried and now primarily focuses on philanthropy after receiving a 4% stake in Amazon, worth more than $36 billion.
You can peep more reactions to Bill and Melinda Gates tossing their marriage in the recycle bin and permanently deleting it in the gallery below.
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Photo: AFP / Getty
