Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sánchez's Billionaire Behavior Shows Why His First Marriage Really Failed

To say that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez live a lavish life would be the understatement of the century. Given that the businessman is one of the richest people on Earth (the second richest as of May 2025, to be exact), Bezos and Sánchez are constantly showing off their wealth and expensive taste. In fact, it seems like the only reason Bezos and Sánchez sat out the 2025 Met Gala was to plan their massive, three-day wedding extravaganza in Italy. What's interesting about all this is that we don't think it'd be a stretch to say that the tech billionaire's love for all things luxurious played a key role in the failure of his first marriage, to philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

A 2024 Daily Mail piece dove into Bezos and Scott's time as husband and wife, and it seems that while their life together was certainly comfortable, it was also relatively quiet. "I like to read the newspaper, I like to have coffee, I like to have breakfast with my kids before they go to school," Bezos said in a 2018 speech quoted by the outlet. On the surface at least, it was a far cry from the man who now offers his friends trips to the edge of outer space. However, the speed at which Bezos and Sánchez got together and started making waves after the Amazon founder's split from Scott in 2019 makes us think he was longing to not only be more loud with his wealth, but to be with someone who matched that energy.

While Jeff Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sánchez clearly have a taste for the finer things in life, his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott made a conscious effort to keep their family life relatively grounded, despite their vast wealth. To that end, Scott's approach to parenting her and Bezos' four children was actually quite similar to that of fellow divorced couple Bill and Melinda Gates. They've made it a point to keep their kids humble, with the Microsoft co-founder, in particular, long vowing to only leave them a small fraction of his own immense fortune when he passes away (the rest will go to charity). "I don't think that amount of money would be good for them," Bill reasoned to the Daily Mail in 2011.

Not only that, but Melinda and Scott apparently even shared parenting tips with each other on occasion. "Well, first of all, [the kids] had an allowance, so we absolutely did not just buy them things. [...] And so I think it was much more of an upbringing like I grew up in: a very middle-class household where money did dictate whether I got an extra pair of shoes that year or not, right?" Melinda explained to the New York Times in 2024, adding that "MacKenzie was helpful to me in this" and that the two women "had quite similar philosophies." Compare this to Bezos' new bride-to-be, who indulges in items like a $6,000 coffee cup-shaped clutch bag, proving Sánchez is more than a bit out of touch.