‘Painful’: Melinda Gates spills on divorce

Melinda Gates is opening up about her “unbelievably painful” divorce from Bill Gates.

“I had some reasons I just couldn’t stay in that marriage anymore,” Ms Gates, 58, told Fortune magazine. 

“But the odd thing about Covid is that it gave me the privacy to do what I needed to do.

“It’s unbelievably painful, in innumerable ways, but I had the privacy to get through it,” she continued.

Melinda and Bill, 66, married in 1994 and were together for 27 years before divorcing in May 2021. 
 

They have three children together — Jennifer, 25, Rory, 23, and Phoebe, 19 — who were always Melinda’s “main concern” during the separation.

The former couple also founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 and continue to run it together following their separation — which Ms Gates credits for helping her process her emotions.

“I kept working with the person I was moving away from, and I needed to show up and be my best self every single day,” the philanthropist said. 

“So even though I might be crying at 9am and then have to be on a video conference at 10am with the person I’m leaving, I have to show up and be my best.

“I learned as a leader that I could do it. It reminded me that the foundation calls me to be my best,” she added. 
 

Ms Gates shared that working with people dealing with hard times during the pandemic allowed her to do her best work during her own difficult time.

“We work with unbelievable partners around the world who were also struggling during Covid,” she said. 

“I was on a video call with a woman who had lost her father, and a week later she’s on a call with me, right?”

Ms Gates told Gayle King in an interview with CBS Mornings earlier this year that she shed “a lot of tears for many days” and was “grieving a loss” following the divorce. 

It was revealed in 2021 that Bill had a lengthy affair with a Microsoft employee in 2000 and that he reportedly asked out several women in the office while he was married, though it’s unclear how much Ms Gates knew about this behaviour at the time.

This story was originally published by the New York Post and was reproduced with permission