Jeff Bezos might have cemented his place as the richest man in the world during 2018 (seriously, he added around $24 billion to his net worth), but 2019 is off to a somewhat rocky start.

Yesterday, Jeff and his wife MacKenzie announced they were getting divorced after a 25-year marriage, although it looks like they’re parting on good terms.

According to the statement put out yesterday via Bezos’ Twitter account, there’s been a “long period of loving exploration” and, if given the chance to go back in time, they would “do it all again”.

Here’s the statement in full:

The couple got engaged just three months after they started dating, marrying back in 1993, and a year later Jeff founded Amazon.

Given that they’ve clearly been exploring other avenues, it’s no surprise that Bezos is rumoured to have been seeing another woman.

The BBC commenting on the speculation below:

US media report that Mr Bezos has been romantically involved with a former Fox TV host, Lauren Sánchez.

Entertainment news site TMZ, citing sources linked to Ms Sánchez, said the presenter has been “seeing” Mr Bezos as of late last year.

Of course, if you want the real speculation and ‘inside sources’, you head to the Daily Mail, who are having a field day with this story.

They say that Sánchez is currently married, and that Bezos announced the divorce “ahead of the release of embarrassing photos that expose the affair”.

More from that story:

Since at least the fall, Bezos has been seeing Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and the former anchor of Fox 11’s Good Day LA who is married to Hollywood talent mogul husband Patrick Whitesell, according to reports.

Photos of Bezos, 54, and Sanchez [with Bezos below left, at Amazon’s Golden Globes party this past Sunday], 49, are set to hit the newsstands on Thursday, in an edition of the National Enquirer that the magazine says ‘exposes WHAT REALLY tore apart Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie after 25 years’.

The Enquirer claims that Bezos ‘two-timed’ his wife by ‘whisking his mistress off to exotic destinations on his $65 million private jet’ and ‘sending her raunchy messages and erotic selfies.’

Here’s a picture of Bezos, Sánchez and husband Patrick Whitesell, taken back in 2016:

The Daily Mail quotes “a source close to Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos” with saying that “the couple ‘worked very hard’ on their marriage before becoming separated, and that Jeff Bezos only began seeing Sanchez after separating from his wife”.

The National Enquirer have a different version of events:

The Enquirer says it trailed Bezos across five states for four months in what it calls the ‘largest investigation’ in the magazine’s history, with its photographer catching the lovebirds ‘doing the dirty on their spouses together no fewer than six times in 14 days.’

The magazine claims that the affair has gone on for some eight months behind the back of both Bezos’ wife and Sanchez’s husband.

The bombshell story is a major coup for the Enquirer and its CEO David Pecker, a one-time ally to President Donald Trump, whose scorn for Bezos’ Washington Post has been no secret.

Sources have also claimed that Patrick and Lauren have been separated for a while, “attempting to spin the alleged affair as something that was known to all parties”.

To sum it all up, I don’t really care, but when you’re the world’s richest man there’s no such thing as a private life.

For a fortune estimated at around $137 billion, I’d be willing to give up my privacy.

[sources:bbc&dailymail]