Lauren Sánchez: The Modern Woman Soaring High with Jeff Bezos
Lauren Sánchez is a true embodiment of a modern woman who has it all. She's the girl's girl who's marrying one of the richest men in the world, but she's not just along for the ride. She's flying the damn thing, and her wedding to Jeff Bezos is playing out like an event ripped from a Prime Video movie.
The Paris bachelorette party, featuring guest stars like Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian, and Kris Jenner, set up a fun Act 1. For the grand finale in Italy, she's bringing the glamour, intrigue, and unexpected edge, turning what could have been just another nouveau riche wedding into a full-blown cultural moment. The couple is just weeks away from saying "I do" in Venice with a modest bash that reportedly has a $14 million budget.
When the Sánchez and Bezos relationship first leaked to the press in January 2019, Bezos had just announced his divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie Scott. Simultaneously, Sánchez was divorcing her husband of 13 years, celebrity agent Patrick Whitesell. Neither Bezos nor Sánchez let tabloid fodder sway them. Like the projects they’ve since worked on together at Blue Origin, they went full steam ahead with their romance.
“Anyone who knows Jeff and Lauren socially, professionally, or through their charity ventures understands why they are together,” a friend of the couple tells Yahoo Entertainment. “She’s smart, adventurous, and fun. She keeps him on his toes. Lauren really is the yin to his yang.”
In a culture quick to write women off at middle age, Sánchez, 55, has flipped the script. She has all the makings of a tabloid target—money, fame, well-known exes, and Bezos as her fiancé. And yet, for someone in her position, she draws surprisingly little public ire (except for her fashion choices). Even after the backlash Blue Origin’s first all-female crew received following April’s trip to space, Sánchez came out relatively unscathed compared to the criticism aimed at Perry and Gayle King.
Sánchez had her own identity pre-Bezos. Long before she was a mainstay on Bezos’s superyacht Koru, she had carved out a career that was uniquely hers—and far from ordinary. She dreamed of being a journalist as a kid but struggled in school until a teacher encouraged her to get tested for dyslexia. Her world changed: “I went from barely getting Cs in a community college to earning a 3.8 GPA to then going to the University of Southern California and becoming a journalist,” she recalled to Elle in a September 2024 interview. She went on to become an Emmy-winning journalist who co-anchored Good Day L.A. She also appeared on Extra and The View.
But Sánchez’s true passion is aviation. She was inspired by her parents, both pilots, but didn't pursue a side career in the field until age 40. With encouragement from her father, she began taking flying lessons and discovered a new sense of confidence after her first solo flight. This moment shifted her perspective on life and empowered her to believe in herself. “The first time I flew solo, I was like, ‘I can do this on my own. I’ve got this,’” she told Elle. In 2016 she founded Black Ops Aviation
