BILLION-DOLLAR DIVORCE
‘WE NO LONGER BELIEVE WE CAN GROW TOGETHER AS A COUPLE IN THIS NEXT PHASE OF OUR LIVES’
WHEN they got married, a simple wedding gift from her parents would become one of her most treasured possessions.
It was a sculpture of two little birds sitting side by side staring at the horizon, and she put it in the front garden of their home so she could see it whenever she came and went.
“Those birds are still in front of our house,” she wrote in 2018 in her and her husband’s annual newsletter. “I think of it all the time because fundamentally Bill and I are looking in the same direction.”
How poignant those words are now – and how bittersweet that sculpture must be. After 27 years of marriage, three kids, billions of dollars and decades of philanthropy, Bill and Melinda Gates are no longer looking in the same direction. And it’s no exaggeration to say their split has left the world gobsmacked.
In a world where high-flying couples get divorced all the time, the Gateses seemed stable and “normal”, a slightly
