{"id":473888,"date":"2021-05-05T09:50:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T13:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=473888"},"modified":"2021-05-05T09:50:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T13:50:52","slug":"bill-gates-had-agreement-with-wife-he-could-spend-one-weekend-each-year-with-former-girlfriend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bill-gates-had-agreement-with-wife-he-could-spend-one-weekend-each-year-with-former-girlfriend\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates Had Agreement With Wife He Could Spend One Weekend Each Year With Former Girlfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbill-gates-had-agreement-with-wife-he-could-spend-one-weekend-each-year-with-former-girlfriend%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=473888&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Gates-1000x800-1.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>Bill Gates, the co-founder and former CEO of\u00a0Microsoft who is worth a reported $134.1 billion and announced his divorce from his wife Melinda after 27 years of marriage on Monday, reportedly had an agreement with his wife for years that he could spend one weekend a year with his former girlfriend, Ann Winblad, at the beach.<\/p>\n<p>Gates, 65, and Ann Winblad, 70, dated in the 80s but broke up in 1987, the year he met Melinda. Winblad founded Open Systems Inc., an accounting software company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/1996\/09\/winblad\/\">eventually sold<\/a> for over $15 million six years later, then launched the nation\u2019s first venture capital firm focused exclusively on software, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which <a href=\"https:\/\/news.stthomas.edu\/always-a-coach\/\">reportedly<\/a> financed 80 software startups.<\/p>\n<p>Winblad is currently married to San Francisco private investigator Edward Alex Kline, the younger brother of actor Kevin Kline.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,1120657-12,00.html\">TIME Magazine<\/a> reported in 1997, \u201cGates has an arrangement with his wife that he and Winblad can keep one vacation tradition alive. Every spring, as they have for more than a decade, Gates spends a long weekend with Winblad at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they ride dune buggies, hang-glide and walk on the beach. \u2018We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology,\u2019 Gates says. Winblad puts it more grandly. \u2018We share our thoughts about the world and ourselves,\u2019 she says. \u2018And we marvel about how, as two young overachievers, we began a great adventure on the fringes of a little-known industry and it landed us at the center of an amazing universe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>TIME reported that Gates and Winblad met in 1984 and \u201cstarted going on \u2018virtual dates\u2019 by driving to the same movie at the same time in different cities and discussing it on their cell phones.\u201d TIME added:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"28\">\n<p><em>They were kindred minds as well as spirits. On a vacation to Brazil, he took James Watson\u2019s 1,100-page textbook, Molecular Biology of the Gene, and they studied bioengineering together. On another vacation, to a Santa Barbara, California, ranch, she took tapes of Richard Feynman\u2019s lectures at Cornell, and they studied physics. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And on a larger excursion with friends to central Africa, which ended at some beach cottages on an island off Zanzibar, among their companions was anthropologist Donald Johanson, known for his work on the human ancestor Lucy, who helped teach them about human evolution. In the evenings on each trip they would go to the beach with four or five other couples for bonfires, Hood Canal-style games and a tradition they called the sing-down, where each team is given a word and has to come up with songs that feature it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>TIME reported that despite the fact that they broke up in 1987, \u201cpartly because Winblad, five years older, was more ready for marriage,\u201d they stayed close friends. Gates told TIME, \u201cWhen I was off on my own thinking about marrying Melinda. I called Ann and asked for her approval.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, Winblad told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/sanjose\/news\/2013\/10\/14\/vc-ann-winblad-on-women-in-tech.html\">Silicon Valley Business Journal<\/a> that she and Gates met in 1984, recalling, \u201cBill and I went for a walk on a beach and Bill tells me, \u2018I can see my way, if I really squint, to $500 million in revenue.\u2019 In 1984 there was not yet a software company that had achieved $100 million in revenue. Bill was a great influence on me and I was thinking, wow, you can actually build a company that big in the software industry? Are you kidding me? I remember making him take a stick or a rock and drawing the numbers out on the sand for me. How was he going to get there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She continued, \u201cHe then said, \u2018What troubles me is I can\u2019t see how I am going to get past $500 million.\u2019 I thought, \u2018You\u2019re troubled about that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Gates and his wife posted a statement reading:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"12\">\n<p><em>After a great deal of thought and a lot of work, we have made the decision to end our marriage. Over the last 27 years, we have\u00a0raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.\u00a0We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue to work\u00a0together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our\u00a0lives.\u00a0We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Gates, the co-founder and former CEO of\u00a0Microsoft who is worth a reported $134.1 billion and announced his divorce from his wife Melinda after 27 years of marriage on Monday, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2277348,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Gates-1000x800-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Bill Gates Had Agreement With Wife He Could Spend One Weekend Each Year With Former Girlfriend","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Gates-1000x800-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Bill Gates Had Agreement With Wife He Could Spend One Weekend Each Year With Former Girlfriend","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}