Who is Lauren Sanchez, the woman marrying Amazon founder Jeff Bezos?

BBC News

5 hours ago

It's the wedding that everyone is talking about - US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos is set to marry TV presenter Lauren Sanchez, and the million-dollar party in Venice has caused quite a stir.Activists have been protesting against the event, with "No Space for Bezos" posters and banners plastered across the city.But the three-day event is set to go ahead and the guest list is rumoured to include hundreds of A-listers, including Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio.While Bezos' name is synonymous with e-commerce empires, space technology companies and extreme wealth, his wife-to-be is perhaps lesser known but is no stranger to the spotlight.
Early life
Sanchez is a third-generation Mexican-American and was born in New Mexico in 1969 and raised in California. In 2017, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she didn't have much growing up."We came from nothing. I used to sleep in the back of my grandmother's car when she would go clean houses," she said.As a young adult, she applied to be an air stewardess but was told she weighed too much - "back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds. They said, 'You need to be 115'", she told The Wall Street Journal.She chose instead to study journalism at the University of Southern California, leaving in 1994 to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.
Journalism career
Sanchez worked in various local newsrooms before landing roles as a reporter and anchor at outlets like Fox Sports Net, Extra, and Good Day LA.She was a familiar face on American television in the late 1990s and earned an Emmy nomination for her show on Fox Sports Net, Going Deep and won an Emmy Award in 1999 as the anchor on KCOP-TV's UPN News 13.Sanchez went on to work as the co-host of KTTV Fox 11's Good Day LA, an anchor on the Fox 11 News at Ten and was the original host of dancing competition So You Think You Can Dance. According to The Times, in 2003 Sanchez appeared on the cover of lads' magazine Open Your Eyes with the headline: America's hottest news anchor.
Helicopter pilot
At the age of 40, Sanchez pivoted from news desks to cockpits and became a licensed helicopter pilot which she says was inspired by her father who was a flight instructor. In 2016, she launched Black Ops Aviation, becoming the first woman to own an aerial film production company. The company has provided cinematography to clients such as Netflix and Amazon and served as a consultant on Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk.Her interest in aviation saw her join the all-female crew of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket earlier this year alongside Gayle King and Katy Perry.Sanchez said that the 10-minute suborbital spaceflight mission funded by Jeff Bezos' aerospace venture, made her come back with an open heart."Protect this planet we're on, this is the only one we've got," she said. She also released a children's book in 2024 - The Fly Who Flew to Space - which drew on her own childhood struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia.
Personal life
Sanchez has three children - a son born in 2001 with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez and two from her marriage with Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell. It is believed that Sanchez met Bezos after her company Black Ops Aviation was hired to film for Blue Origin.Rumours emerged that the pair started dating in early 2019 and Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in January of that year. A few months later Sanchez also filed for divorce from Whitesell. Both Bezos and Sanchez had been separated from their partners for some time before the divorces were announced.In the summer of 2023, the couple announced their engagement and threw a star-studded party on Bezos' yacht on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.The pair will now tie the knot at a three-day wedding in Venice.