Gates was already a billionaire he married Melinda in the early 1990s. He founded Microsoft in 1975 and became the world's youngest billionaire in 1987 at the age of 31. He also met Melinda that year when she was working at the company where he served as CEO.
They married six years later but he deliberated over it and, according to previous interviews given by Melinda, even made a list of pros and cons for marriage on a whiteboard.
The reason behind their split after over a quarter-century remains a mystery but Melinda has previously suggested her husband had trouble balancing work and family.
The couple met in 1987 when Melinda was working at Microsoft as a project manager and was seated next to Gates at a business dinner.
Melinda described the meeting in her 2019 biography The Moment of Lift, writing: 'I showed up late, and all the tables were filled except one, which still had two empty chairs side by side. I sat in one of them. A few minutes later, Bill arrived and sat in the other.'
Melinda actually dated several other people in the early days of their relationship, while the 'other woman' in Bill's life was his beloved computer company.
'She had other boyfriends, and I had Microsoft,' Bill said. 'We were like, "Hey we are not really serious about each other, are we? We are not going to demand each other’s time."'
cray thing is, he chased her
How Did Bill Gates and His Wife Meet?
After the dinner, Gates invited Melinda to go dancing with him and a few friends. But she turned him down, telling him that she’d already made other plans with a friend. So, they went their separate ways.
Bill and Melinda Gates reconnected months later
Several months later, they ran into each other in a parking lot at the Microsoft headquarters and “struck up a conversation.”
After talking for “a while,” Gates asked Melinda on a date.
“You know I was thinking maybe we could go out — if you give me your phone number — maybe two weeks from tonight,” Gates said, according to an interview Melinda did with
Makers.
“And I said to him, ‘Two weeks from tonight? I have no idea what I’m doing two weeks from tonight.’ And I said, ‘You’re not spontaneous enough for me,’” Melinda recalled.
But Gates did not give up.
“He called an hour later and said, ‘Is this spontaneous enough for you?'” she continued.
That time, Melinda agreed to go out with him. They went out for wine and immediately hit it off.
They fell in love about a year later
In the 2019 Netflix docuseries,
Inside Bill’s Brain, Gates said that he and Melinda said those three magical words about a year into their relationship.
He said: “Sort of to our surprise, certainly my surprise, we said, ‘Hey, I love you.’ And she said she loved me and then it was like, ‘Wow, and now what is going to happen?’”
They realized that they either needed to take the next step in their relationship or split up.
“You know, 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,” Gates continued.
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