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Centibillionaire Jeff Bezos might be super successful and secure now, but back in the day, he relied on his friends to set him up on blind dates, hoping their connections would help him find love.
Before meeting his first wife MacKenzie Scott and becoming one of the world’s richest men, the future Amazon founder faced challenges with dating in New York. He believed that a more structured approach might help him find the right partner. His friends tried to play matchmaker by introducing him to potential dates, but despite their efforts, he never ended up in a serious relationship.
A recently resurfaced interview shows how Bezos even came up with a term for his approach — “women flow,” a twist on the Wall Street concept of “deal flow,” which refers to a steady stream of investment opportunities.
He figured if he had enough introductions, he was bound to meet someone special. Yet, even with a pipeline of dates, he remained single.
“At a certain point, I was sort of a professional dater,” he explained in the 1999 Wired interview.
He had one very specific requirement for a partner: She had to be resourceful. To make his point clear, he used an unusual analogy, telling friends he wanted a woman who could get him out of a Third World prison.
“What I really wanted was someone resourceful,” he said. “But nobody knows what you mean when you say, ‘I’m looking for a resourceful woman.’ If I tell somebody I’m looking for a woman who can get me out of a Third World prison, they start thinking Ross Perot — Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! — they have something they can hang their hat on!”
Even with his well-connected friends arranging dates, Bezos admitted he was not the type to make a strong first impression.
“I’m not the kind of person where women say, ‘Oh, look how great he is,’ a half hour after meeting me. I’m kind of goofy,” he explained. His strategy may have introduced him to plenty of women, but it never led to anything lasting.
Ironically, the relationship that changed his life did not come from one of these setups.
Instead, he met his first wife, MacKenzie Scott, through work. She was a research associate at D.E. Shaw, the investment firm where Bezos was a vice president. After interviewing her for a job, he hired her, and their offices ended up right next to each other.
MacKenzie later told Vogue in 2013, “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?”
They married in 1993, moved to Seattle, and launched Amazon together, building an empire and raising four children. But after 25 years, their marriage ended in a highly publicized divorce in 2019, with MacKenzie walking away with $36 billion in Amazon stock.
Years later, Bezos found love again, but just like before, it wasn’t through a carefully planned setup.
This time, his relationship with Lauren Sánchez, a former TV host and helicopter pilot, started while both were married to other people.
Sanchez was then married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, and the two couples had been friends for years.
The affair reportedly began around 2017, and according to Sanchez’s brother, Michael, the two were deeply connected.
“Lauren and Jeff think they are meant to be—that it’s written in the stars,” he told Page Six in 2019, even claiming they had visited an expensive psychic in New Mexico to confirm their future together.
Their relationship became public in January 2019 when The National Enquirer leaked intimate text messages between them, just hours after Bezos and MacKenzie announced their divorce.
Around the same time, Page Six reports, Sanchez confessed to her husband that she was in love with Bezos.
Despite the scandal, they remained together. In May 2023, they got engaged during a vacation on Bezos’ $500 million superyacht.
Since announce Sánchez would be his wife, other scandals have emerged. Most of the headlines revolve around her wardrobe and how inappropriately provocatively she dresses.
One striking story alleged she stole her former friend and yoga instructor Alanna Zabel’s idea for Sánchez‘s new children’s book.
The same woman also claimed that Sánchez has had a crush on former President Bill Clinton.
Looking back, Bezos’ attempt to structure his dating life through his friends never led to love. The two most significant relationships in his life—his marriage to MacKenzie and his engagement to Sanchez—happened naturally.
His friends’ matchmaking may have introduced him to plenty of women, but in the end, it was real-world connections that brought him lasting relationships.
