Bill Gates married Melinda French in 1994.
The couple married on January 1, 1994, in a private ceremony on the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Melinda French had joined Microsoft in 1987 and later became a senior executive involved with multimedia and online services. Their relationship therefore connected Gates’s personal life with Microsoft’s growing corporate history.
Bill and Melinda Gates had three children: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe. They also became prominent partners in philanthropy, first through the William H. Gates Foundation and later through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The marriage year is sometimes confused with the year the Gates Foundation was created or with later changes in the couple’s philanthropic organizations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was formed in 2000 through a merger involving earlier foundations. Bill and Melinda announced their divorce in 2021.