Teamwork makes the romance work, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and longtime girlfriend Lauren Sánchez gush in their first interview as a couple.
Bezos, the fourth wealthiest person in the world, and journalist Sanchez shared their mutual adoration during a sit-down interview with CNN.
“We’re really great teammates, and we also have a lot of fun together,” Sánchez said. “And we love each other … We always look at each other and we’re the team.”
Bezos added that “it’s easy.”
“We bring each other energy, we respect each other. So, it’s fun to work together,” the online retail titan said.
Bezos, 58, who also is founder of the spaceflight company Blue Origin, said he hopes to make space travel accessible for everyone — and believes in his lifetime everyone who wants to should be able to travel to space.
“Let me give you an example. The Wright brothers flew this tiny little plane, just a couple hundred feet. And if you told the Wright brothers a hundred years from now, there’s going be a 787 that carries 400 people, they’d laugh,” Bezos said.
Sánchez, 52, an Emmy-award-winning journalist, asserted she plans on flying to space in 2023 on a flight accompanied by a “great group of females.” Sánchez is also a licensed pilot and founder of Black Ops Aviation, the first female-owned and operated aerial film and production company.
“I’ve also learned how to fly the helicopter,” Bezos said, prompting a laugh from Sanchez. “And she’s a horrible backseat pilot. She’s terrible!”
Sánchez countered she “realized that when I’m in the back of the helicopter when he’s flying, I just kind of have to look out the window, just kind of enjoy the scenery.
“I’m like, ‘No, no. Pull up. Okay. Okay, Slow down.’ But he’s very good.,” she said.
The normally-private pair also spoke about their typical weekends, admitting Saturday nights consist of watching movies and spending time with their families.
“We can be kind of boring,” Sánchez said. “I would say normal. We have dinner with the kids. That’s always fun and a great conversation. There’s seven between us, so there’s a lot of discussion. And then we watch a movie … by committee. It takes a long time to find that movie.”
“We probably spend more time picking the movie than we need to,” Bezos added.
During the interview Bezos also revealed he plans to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime, admitting he doesn’t yet have a plan on how to unload his billions on issues like climate change.
He said he plans on taking his time doing so.
“It’s not easy,” Bezos said. “Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”
“There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too,” he added. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”
Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has given away nearly $4 billion to 465 organizations in less than a year and twice that amount over the past two years.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
