After a difficult divorce from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, billionaire Melinda French Gates was seen arriving in New York City by helicopter with her new tech-savvy partner approximately three years later.
The 60-year-old philanthropist was seen holding hands with Seattle-based entrepreneur Philip Vaughn — who formerly worked as a computer programmer at her ex-husband’s company — after landing Wednesday morning, exclusive photos obtained by The Post reveal.
Vaughn, who also founded the app-based craft beer delivery service Tavour over a decade ago, stepped off the chopper first and the pair then smiled as they climbed into an SUV.
The lovebirds were both dressed casually in sneakers with French Gates sporting a floral scarf around her neck and dark-colored pants. Vaughn wore an Army green T-shirt under a blue coat and aviator- Ray-Bans.
Vaughn worked at Microsoft, the company French Gate’s ex-husband co-founded, for nearly nine years including as a computer programmer, according to his LinkedIn profile.
French Gates stepped out with her new beau a little over three years after filing for a heartbreaking divorce in August 2021 — and after 27 years of marriage to the tech giant.
“I had some reasons I just couldn’t stay in that marriage anymore,” French Gates told Fortune magazine the following year. “But the odd thing about COVID is that it gave me the privacy to do what I needed to do.
“It’s unbelievably painful, in innumerable ways, but I had the privacy to get through it,” she said.
She revealed that her ex-husband — then the fourth-richest man in the world — also had a lengthy affair with one of his Microsoft staffers in 2019. But she said she’d moved beyond the betrayal prior to their divorce.
“I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that,” she told CBS Mornings in 2022.
The former couple have three children together — Jennifer, 25, Rory, 23, and Phoebe, 19 — who were her “main concern” during the separation, she said.
The exes founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 and continued to run it together following their separation in May 2021.
The former couple didn’t have a prenuptial agreement when they married in Hawaii on New Year’s Day 1994. During their high-profile divorce, more than $130 billion in assets were on the line.
Tavour is a Seattle-based craft beer delivery service that sends rare high quality beers to user’s doorsteps to give them “access to unique and interesting beer,” he told the Kirkland Reporter in 2013.
“We’re all so smart-phoned and digitized,” Vaughn said. “We came from a tech background … ex-Microsoft, ex-Amazon people, and it just kind of became this desire to build this business that is authentic and not trying to be a billion dollars on day one, but trying to connect with people and tell a story and make people happy and connect them to their community and their area.”
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