How Lauren Sánchez piloted her billionaire love story

She’s the helicopter-flying, space-traveling, fashion-loving, jet-setting girl’s girl who just so happens to be marrying one of the richest men in the world. But Lauren Sánchez isn’t just along for the ride — she’s flying the damn thing.

More than just a plus-one to a billionaire, Sánchez is why her wedding to Jeff Bezos, already dubbed the wedding of the year, 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’ve 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 (to put that number into context, in 2023 Bezos allegedly made nearly $8 million an hour every hour). Daily Mail sources said the June 24-26 event has undergone a “makeunder” and will not be “an ostentatious blowout.” The mayor of Venice said in a statement that only 200 guests received invites and that the city is ready to accommodate the A-listers, including the yachts, private jets and all the other trappings of the 1% of the 1%.

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. They are a team,” one friend of the couple, who preferred to speak anonymously for privacy reasons, 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).

She had her own identity pre-Bezos

Long before she was a mainstay on Bezos’s superyacht Koru, Sánchez had carved out a career that was uniquely hers — and far from ordinary.

Sánchez dreamed of being a journalist as a kid but struggled in school. After 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 coanchored 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,’ and that kind of changed my perspective on life, seeing the world from that point of view,” she told Elle.

In 2016 she founded Black Ops Aviation, the first female owned and operated aerial film and production company, which consulted on films like Dunkirk. She is certified as a helicopter pilot.

Sánchez’s pivot from television to the skies wasn’t just a career shift — it was a transformation, of sorts.

Vicki Larson, author of Not Too Old for That: How Women Are Changing the Story of Aging, tells Yahoo Entertainment that “midlife is a time of reinvention” for most women. Sometimes that can be forced by divorce, a layoff, becoming an empty nester or because a person pursued their passion, like Sánchez.

“All women have heard the horror stories of midlife, when we allegedly become invisible, irrelevant, undesirable, and yet women like Sánchez are busting those ageist, sexist narratives all the time, including finding love later in life,” Larson adds.

Not only did Sánchez find love, but she found what the public views as age-appropriate love, since Bezos is 61. That certainly helps in the game of PR. (Just ask Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson.) However, any woman who “attracts one of the wealthiest men in the world is going to be ridiculously and unfairly scrutinized as well as seen as a ‘gold digger’ no matter how accomplished or wealthy she is in her own right,” Larson says.

‘A girl’s girl’

The way Sánchez keeps her inner circle close — and the caliber of women in it — only adds to her intrigue.

In May she flew to Paris with 13 of her closest friends for a glamorous bachelorette party, where paparazzi staked out hot spots like Lafayette and Le Grand Café at the Grand Palais. Her tight-knit crew includes some of the most recognizable names in pop culture: Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Katy Perry — all of whom showed up to celebrate the future Mrs. Bezos in the city of love.

“Forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women who’ve lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times, and shaped my heart along the way,” Sánchez captioned a photo from the trip.

In a 2023 Vogue profile, Kardashian called Sánchez “such a girl’s girl.”

“Lauren and I are always sending DMs building each other up,” Kardashian said. “Every time there’s a look that we like, she’ll say, ‘WOW,’ or, ‘OMG, you look amazing.’”

Kardashian’s mother and manager is also close with Sánchez and told the magazine that she knows Bezos and Sánchez will be in her life forever. “She’ll make sure everyone is up to speed about what’s happening in the world,” Jenner said, giving an example about how Sánchez sent an article about the Maui wildfires to their group text. “She has more energy than I do, which is really annoying.”

Sánchez, as she admitted to the Wall Street Journal in 2023, wants “everyone to be my friend.” That includes Tobie Gonzalez, who’s married to her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, former NFL player Tony Gonzalez. Sánchez says Tobie is one of her “best friends” and that she is proud of their relationship and its development over the years, especially because there was initial “friction.”

Another one of Sánchez’s notable friendships is with Eva Longoria. The two connected over improving visibility for Latin women. Last year Sánchez and Bezos awarded the Desperate Housewives alum a $50 million Courage and Civility Award, which she plans to use to support those philanthropic efforts. Longoria said she wants to bring more Latinas and women in front and behind the cameras in Hollywood, a goal that Sánchez shares.

“I want to surround myself with people who are really making a difference in this world,” Sánchez told Elle. “[Longoria is] so inspiring. ... [Her work,] advocating for empowering Latinas and increasing women’s representation, really affected me.”

That bond with Longoria also speaks to something deeper: Sánchez’s pride in her identity and elevating other women who share it.

Sánchez’s Latina representation matters

Sánchez is a third-generation Latina who grew up in Albuquerque with two Mexican American parents. “It’s important that we use our voices, and demand a seat at the table,” she told Elle last year.

I spoke with someone who admires what Sánchez has done as a Mexican American with a platform, Colombian fashion photographer Andrés Oyuela.

“Representation is so, so important,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment.

In January, Oyuela wrote a Substack post titled “This is why I love Lauren Sanchez” after her outfit at President Trump’s inauguration captured headlines. He was inspired to write the post after receiving texts from friends who thought seeing a woman who looked like them at such a powerful event meant something.

As for the outfit itself — a white Alexander McQueen pantsuit with a peekaboo bra underneath — it launched a thousand memes thanks to a viral video that showed Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg seemingly checking out Sánchez’s chest.

Sánchez’s wardrobe choice divided the internet. While Gen Z debated if the look was on trend with being an “office siren,” some said it wasn’t appropriate for work, let alone the inauguration. For all her detractors, though, plenty of keyboard enthusiasts sang her sartorial praises, with “that girl” and “absolutely stunning” being frequent phrases dropped in her Instagram comments section.

Sánchez won’t apologize for how she dresses, which she believes celebrates the Latin culture. “I love fashion,” she told Elle. “I dress very Latin. Think of Sofía Vergara. Think of Salma Hayek. I really just kind of remain committed to expressing my true, authentic self through fashion, and some people really love it, and some people really hate it, and that’s okay.”

It wasn’t a big deal to the people who matter most.

“People were like, ‘Oh, she’s breaking the dress code or the protocol.’ I think the problem that people have is that they’re not used to seeing this type of woman in these circles and these positions,” Oyuela says. “To me, she’s the cool girl in Latin America: The hot girl who’s friends with everybody, is very smart and she’s the president of the class.”

A recurring knock against Sánchez’s style is that she doesn’t dress like a classic version of a CEO’s wife. Guess who doesn’t care? Sánchez or Bezos.

“I always found it interesting that people say, ‘Well, Lauren, you definitely dress more for men.’ I actually dress for myself,” she told Vogue.

Bezos added to the magazine with a “wry smile”: “But it works for Jeff.”

Larson says it’s great to see “women, especially women at midlife and older, who celebrate their sexuality and feel comfortable in their skin.” She points out that ironically, it’s often “women who are most judgmental about another woman ‘flaunting’ her sexuality.”

Sánchez’s confidence — in her style, career and relationship — is exactly what Bezos admires most. While the internet debates her wardrobe, he’s focused on the woman behind it and their partnership.

“She has really helped me put more energy into my relationships,” he said. “She’s always encouraging me: ‘Call your kids. Call your dad. Call your mom.’ And she’s also just a very good role model. She keeps in touch with people. I’ve never seen her put makeup on without calling somebody. Usually her sister.”

Sánchez will soon be known as Mrs. Lauren Bezos — she confirmed she’s taking his name — but don’t expect the journalist turned philanthropist to be any less Lauren Sánchez. She owns each chapter of her story unapologetically. She’s not necessarily trying to be relatable; she’s just being herself. And in a culture obsessed with authenticity, that might be her most powerful move of all.