Lauren Sanchez, who was reported to be having an affair with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, filed for divorce Friday, just a day after Bezos and his wife finalized their divorce.
The Los Angeles-based news anchor, 49, and her husband of 14 years, Patrick Whitesell, both filled out the paperwork. The pair will be seeking joint custody of their two children, who are 13 and 11. Sanchez also has an 18-year-old son with former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez.
The pair confirmed that they had already separated at the time the affair between Sanchez and Bezos took place.
Sanchez reportedly knew Bezos, 55, for many years before their affair, often running into each other at major social events. According to Page Six, the Amazon CEO hired Sanchez, who is also a licensed helicopter pilot, for an aerial shoot project for one of Bezos’ ventures, aerospace company Blue Origin.
“Lauren and Jeff have been spending a lot of time together over the last year and especially the past few months,” a source told People. “At first it was socially at parties … here and there. But their time together has definitely seemed to evolve, raising some eyebrows. Jeff has met a small group of Lauren’s girlfriends, too.”
MacKenzie Bezos announced she had finalized her divorce from her husband of 25 years Thursday, tweeting out a statement saying Jeff Bezos keeps 75% of the company’s shares and full control of the Washington Post.
The couple met and got married while working at a hedge fund in New York in the early 1990s. After getting married they moved to Seattle, where Bezos eventually founded Amazon.
The two announced their divorce in January, after the National Enquirer informed the Amazon CEO of an impending expose of intimate text messages he exchanged with Sanchez.
“I love you, alive girl. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon,” he said in one text from April 2018. A month later, he wrote: “I want to smell you, I want to breathe you in. I want to hold you tight .… I want to kiss your lips …. I love you. I am in love with you.”
It later emerged that Sanchez’s brother Michael had leaked the texts.
