Wife who helped him create a web giant

‘Loved to hear him laugh’

WITHOUT MacKenzie Bezos, Amazon may never have existed. She is said to have encouraged her husband Jeff to leave the hedge fund where they worked together in the early 1990s to try out his idea for an online bookseller. A quarter of a century later Amazon has revolutionised internet retailing, and MacKenzie played a huge role. But the 48-yearold novelist has said she sees her fortune as coming from having loving parents and her family, not her wealth. While she rarely does interviews, Mrs Bezos did once give a book about her husband a one-star review on Amazon because it had ‘way too many inaccuracies’. Mrs Bezos was born MacKenzie Tuttle and studied under Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison while at Princeton. She met her future hus- band when they were working at investment management firm DE Shaw where he was a vice-president and she was a research assistant.

He interviewed her and they hit it off immediately. She asked him out to lunch and three months later they were engaged; three months after that they married.

In an interview with Vogue in 2013 Mrs Bezos said that she loved hearing her future husband’s laugh in the office next to hers, which she called ‘fabulous’ – others have said it sounds terrifying.

The couple have three sons and an adopted daughter from China and once tried homeschooling, without nannies. A friend said: ‘They would think it bad to raise kids who are isolated by their wealth.’