Lauren Sanchez Bezos is not even a year into her marriage to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, but she’s already preparing to face another major life milestone—when her daughter, Ella, flies the family nest to attend college later this year.
The 56-year-old former on-air correspondent, who tied the knot with Bezos, 62, in a multiday event in June, opened up about her very emotional response to her daughter’s impending departure from their home while appearing on the “Today” show to promote her new children’s book, “The Fly Who Flew Under the Sea.”
Speaking to anchor Craig Melvin, Sanchez Bezos began chatting about her own children: elder son Nikko Gonzalez, 25, whose father is NFL star Tony Gonzalez, and son Evan Whitesell and daughter Ella, whom she shares with her ex-husband, Patrick Whitesell.
The mother of three—who has also become stepmother to Bezos’ four children with his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott—confessed to Melvin that, while she wasn’t worried at all when her two sons packed their bags, it’s a very different matter when it comes to her daughter.
“When my boys went to college, I was like, ‘Let’s move along, let’s get out of the house.’ Literally, both of them. One is graduated, one is in college right now,” she said. But “my daughter is leaving, and I went to dinner with her the other night, and I started talking about her going to college, and I just started crying.”
However, Ella did not respond to her mother’s emotional outburst in quite the way Sanchez Bezos had been expecting.
“I thought she was going to be like, ‘Mom, are you OK?’ She started laughing at me. She was like, ‘You’re not ready for this.’ I am so not ready for this,” she revealed. “I was like, ‘That’s a teenage girl right there.'”
When asked by Melvin how she feels about becoming an empty nester, the proud mom joked that she’s decided to rebrand the experience, admitting that she’s not the biggest fan of that phrase.
“I don’t like saying ’empty nester.’ I have a new word for it. I like ‘egg launcher’ or ‘bird launcher’—maybe a bird launcher is a little bit better,” she said.
While Sanchez Bezos has not shared details about which college her daughter is due to attend, she did express her excitement for Ella, describing her as the “artist in the family.”
“I am really excited for her, she’s the artist in the family, and I can’t wait to see her go,” she added.
Sanchez Bezos previously celebrated her daughter getting into college on her Instagram Story.
“Congratulations! I have tears in my eyes looking at this photo and knowing you will be heading off to college soon. Beyond proud of how hard you work—I love you SO much. Congratulations on getting into the college of your dreams,” she said.
Further in the interview, she revealed that her kids giving speeches at her star-studded wedding was one of her favorite moments.
Despite insisting that she was more than happy for her sons to move out of their home, Sanchez Bezos did in fact express her heartbreak when son Evan went off to college for the first time in August—a moment she documented in an emotional social media post.
“Dropped off Evan at college today,” she wrote, while sharing a picture of the teenager assembling furniture in his new dorm room. “18 years of early mornings, late night snacks, and family dinners … and then there he was building his own dorm cabinet.
“A small thing but in that moment, I saw the start of his next chapter. Proud, heartbroken, grateful.”
Sanchez Bezos previously revealed that her son had been accepted to the University of Miami, where she hinted that the teenager had plans to study business at the institution’s Herbert Business School.
It appears that the newlywed couple carefully timed their weekslong honeymoon to ensure that they could be present when Evan headed off to college, having been spotted partying the night away in Ibiza just days before moving him into his Miami dorm room.
Fortunately for Sanchez Bezos, her son is not straying far from the family nest—which is located on the exclusive enclave of Indian Creek Island, regularly referred to as Miami’s “Billionaire Bunker,” where they count the likes of Tom Brady and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner as neighbors.
Though Bezos had spent many years based out of the tony Seattle suburb of Medina, he and Sanchez Bezos announced in 2023 that they were moving their primary residence to Florida, explaining at the time that the Amazon founder wished to be closer to his parents.
Bezos has built himself quite an impressive compound on Indian Creek Island, where he has bought up three separate dwellings over several years.
The first two properties—an adjacent pair of mansions that sit on the west side of the island—were bought in 2023 for $68 million and $79 million, respectively, according to property records.
Then, in 2024, Bezos made a surprise third property purchase on “Billionaire Bunker,” buying an $87 million six-bedroom mansion that sits some distance from his other two homes on the island.
All three deals were conducted through separate trusts, property records show, and only one of the homes had been publicly listed for sale before being snapped up by Bezos. The other two deals took place off-market.
According to reports, the third property is being used by Bezos and his wife as their primary residence while workers raze the other two homes to make way for the couple’s dream marital compound.
But until that work is completed, Bezos has made sure that their temporary accommodations are up to snuff as far as luxury is concerned, going above and beyond to transform his third “Billionaire Bunker” abode.
Bezos has carried out a significant overhaul of the interior and exterior of his Mediterranean mansion, transforming the 1.84-acre plot into a veritable oasis with the help of professional arborists who have planted a plethora of exotic trees throughout the back and front yards.
Meanwhile, the property’s garage has been transformed into a private gym—with the original door to the structure removed to make way for new industrial-strength doors that cost upward of $100,000.
Inside the dwelling itself, multiple aesthetic renovations have been carried out, as well as several structural changes to the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems.
It is unclear how long work on his other two dwellings will take. However, the scope of the work suggests that it could well take several years before the newly constructed megamansion is completed.
Bezos has been hard at work on building his perfect marital abode on Indian Creek Island since 2023, when he and his wife announced they were relocating their primary residence from Washington to Florida, citing a desire to be closer to the billionaire’s family.
He has, however, retained several residences in Washington state, where he has largely been based in the tony Seattle suburb of Medina, which is also home to the likes of Bill Gates and former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi.
Four years after he founded Amazon, Bezos and his wife at the time, MacKenzie Scott, spent $10 million buying up two homes on a 5-acre plot in the town of Hunts Point. In 2010, they reportedly spent an additional $28 million to extensively renovate the estate, which boasts 310 feet of private shoreline and a private boathouse.
To maximize space (and privacy), Bezos also purchased an adjacent property that same year—a 24,000-square-foot mansion that was reportedly listed for $53 million. It is unclear whether the Amazon CEO paid that hefty sum or snagged a discount.
That home would ultimately serve as the business mogul’s primary residence for the next decade until 2023, when he announced his move to Florida.
Though he still holds the keys to much of his Seattle property portfolio, Bezos did offload one home in April of this year, selling it for an astonishing $63 million, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Bezos made a very hefty profit on the sale of the 9,240-square-foot home, having purchased it for $37.5 million in 2019, the same year he divorced his first wife.
His impressive property portfolio also includes an extraordinary dwelling in Washington, DC, which he purchased for $23 million in 2017, as well as a huge pied-à-terre in New York City that he bought for $16 million in 2020.
The billionaire actually owns $80 million worth of units in the same Manhattan building, including a three-story penthouse and two apartments on the level right below it. In 2019, building permits were filed to combine the units.
On the West Coast, he owns an enormous Beverly Hills megamansion, which he purchased from music mogul David Geffen for $165 million in 2020.
That dwelling recently served as the location for reality TV mogul Kris Jenner‘s 70th birthday party, which saw the likes of Oprah, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Mark Zuckerberg, and Mariah Carey in attendance.