How Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife proved she’s a class act: Billionaire has buffed up to marry Lauren Sanchez, while she’s divorced for the second time – but Mackenzie Scott still got the last laugh

While many former couples go in opposite directions and forge new identities after divorce, there can scarcely be a starker contrast than the one between Jeff Bezos and his former wife Mackenzie Scott. 

While he has transformed himself into an ultra buff billionaire and is seen everywhere from the Monaco Grand Prix to the Oscars with pneumatic girlfriend Lauren Sanchez on his arm, Mackenzie is rarely seen in public and has devoted herself to giving away the billions she landed in their divorce. 

During their 25-year marriage Jeff, was known as a low-key private tech geek, the couple were said to live an ‘abnormally normal’ lifestyle despite their vast wealth. Tellingly, the billionaire e-commerce giant was still driving a 1997 Honda in 2013 – despite making his first appearance on Forbes list of America’s 400 wealthiest people in 1998 – because it was ‘a perfectly good car’.

Now, he’s ditched the mundane trappings of family life for super yachts and space travel, and when Lauren blasted 60 miles above earth on his Blue Origin rocket in April it was somewhat emblematic of their explosive romance, which began when the  Amazon founder, 61, and the journalist, 55, were both still married. 

While it’s unclear when exactly they started seeing each other, Lauren and Jeff’s romance was first exposed by the National Enquirer in January 2019 and soon after, the billionaire divorced the mother of his four children.

Novelist Mackenzie, 55, went on to become the world’s richest woman after walking away with $38billion and a 4 percent stake in Amazon – but rather than live lavishly, she devoted herself to giving away her fortune. 

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Her philanthropy has since seen Mackenzie named one of Time’s most influential people in 2020 and one of the world’s 100 most powerful women by Forbes in 2021 and 2023. 

She went on to remarry in March 2021, to Dan Jewett – a chemistry teacher at her child’s private school. They were rarely seen together, and he quietly resigned from his teaching job at a private high school in Washington the year they married, saying he did not want to create a distraction there.    

However there was yet more heartbreak on the horizon for Mackenzie as she filed for divorce from Dan the following year and is believed to be single while Jeff is gearing up for his Venice wedding to Lauren next month, with celebrities and President Donald Trump on the guest list. 

Despite this, the philanthropist seems to have got the last laugh, coming out on top in the court of public opinion.

In the years since her divorce, Mackenzie has maintained a low public profile, tweeting or writing on Medium only a few times a year to highlight charitable causes. 

She also received plaudits for donating her billions in relative secrecy. Giving as an individual rather than through a foundation meant her donations were known only when the recipients disclosed them, or through her occasional blog posts.

Mackenzie has written previously that she doesn’t respond to press inquiries in an effort not to overshadow the work of the organisations to which she donates. 

She set up a website called Yield Giving which states that, to date, it has given more than $19.3billion to over 2,300 non-profit organisations. 

Jeff and MacKenzie met when the latter interviewed for a job at D.E. Shaw & Co (a New York hedge fund) in 1993.

As co-workers, a workplace romance blossomed between the two, with MacKenzie telling Vogue in 1993 about how they got together.

She said: ‘My office was next door to his, and all day long, I listened to that fabulous laugh. How could you not fall in love with that laugh?’

MacKenzie, who grew up in San Francisco, has been described as a shy child who spent much time alone in her room writing. By the age of six, she’d completed a 142-page novel called The Book Worm.

She attended prestigious university Princeton, where she studied fiction, and her literary abilities were praised by her Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who said MacKenzie was ‘one of the best students [she’d] ever had’.

Her childhood shyness did not stop her from making the first move when it came to Jeff – she asked him out to lunch one day. Three months later, they got engaged, tying the knot three months after that.

During the very early years of their marriage, the couple left New York, renting a one-bedroom home in Seattle so Jeff could work on his dream – creating an online bookshop.

As one of Amazon’s first employees (she was offered an accountancy role when the company started to become successful), she has spoken out about her contribution to the company’s success.

‘I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others represented in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centres, and the door-desk-filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history,’ she once said.

As Amazon became increasingly successful, Jeff and MacKenzie invested in a portfolio of buildings, snapping up properties in Washington, Beverley Hills, California, Texas and Manhattan, New York.

Despite their immense wealth, the couple were determined to maintain a normal family life with their four children – three sons and a daughter they adopted from China.

This staggering wealth meant that when the couple divorced, the division of assets was a topic of interest for many.

Reports at the time said Jeff ‘got off lightly’ when it came to the agreement he and Mackenzie came to in their split. 

While they didn’t explain their reasoning behind the division of assets, Mackenzie took just half of what she was entitled to, keeping a four percent stake in Amazon (then valued at worth $35.8billion) as opposed to eight percent.

Meanwhile Jeff kept 75 percent of their joint $144billion Amazon stake – a 12 per cent stake valued at that time at around $107.5billion.

He also took voting control of his ex-wife’s remaining shares, and was given her interest in The Washington Post, which he bought for $250million in 2013, as well as Blue Origin, the space travel company he was investing in.

Mackenzie opened a Twitter account to share her statement about the split, in which she said she was ‘grateful’ that the process was over and was ‘excited’ for the ‘next phase’.  

‘Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff with support from each other and everyone who reached out to us in kindness, and looking forward to the next phase as co-parents and friends,’ she wrote.

‘Happy to be giving him all of my interest in the Washington Post and Blue Origin and 75 per cent of our Amazon stock plus voting control of my shares to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies.

‘Excited about my own plans. Grateful for the past as I look forward to what comes next.’

Meanwhile, in his own statement, Jeff said: ‘I’m so grateful to all my friends and family for reaching out with encouragement and love.

Her divorce from Jeff came after he embarked on an affair with former television news anchor Lauren.

In the years following, Jeff underwent a look overhaul as he transformed from a scrawny bookstore boss in the 90s to a buff billionaire at age 59 through gruelling workouts and dieting.

Lauren – who is divorced from multimillionaire business executive Patrick Whitesell – also looks widely different to how she did years ago.

The journalist’s changing appearance has sparked public interest, and she has been speculated in the past to have undergone a facelift as well as injectable fillers and Botox.

Their tryst was unveiled after a bombshell report from the Enquirer in 2019 claimed they had been involved in an eight-month affair, which included him sending her raunchy messages and erotic selfies, and having secret rendezvous at palatial private estates.

The outlet said it had tracked them ‘across five states and 40,000 miles, tailing them in private jets, swanky limos, helicopter rides, romantic hikes, five-star hotel hideaways, intimate dinner dates and “quality time” in hidden love nests’.

After the Enquirer’s accusations, Jeff fired back by writing a lengthy essay to the publication’s CEO, David Pecker, in which the e-commerce mogul accused the company of blackmailing him.

‘Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten,’ he wrote.

‘[After] intimate text messages from me were published in the National Enquirer, I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained, and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer.

‘We were then approached with an offer. They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.’

He shared alleged emails sent to him by Enquirer staffers, in which they described the racy images they had ‘obtained during their newsgathering’ in detail.

‘If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can,’ Jeff continued.

‘Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out,’ he added.

As for how the couple met, Lauren’s ex-husband Patrick was apparently the first to introduce the two at an Amazon Studios party for the movie Manchester by the Sea in 2016.

Her production team was then hired to film footage for Jeff’s rocket company, Blue Origin, in 2018.

‘Patrick and Lauren have socialised with Jeff Bezos and his wife for a few years, because both [former] couples have houses in Seattle,’ a source told Page Six after their affair was brought to light.

‘Then Lauren was hired to work on one of Jeff’s projects, Blue Origin, a space-launch company. She has been shooting aerial shots for Jeff.’

After four years of lavish getaways, private jet rides, dinner dates at the most sought-after restaurants in the world, designer shopping trips, yacht rides, and invites to parties amongst the top stars, Jeff and Lauren became engaged in May 2023 and plan to wed in Venice in late June.