Meet Martha Stewart’s ex, Charles Simonyi: the Hungarian-born billionaire created Microsoft Word and Excel, and has been to space twice – Stewart described the split from him as a ‘second divorce’
Meet Martha Stewart’s ex, Charles Simonyi: the Hungarian-born billionaire created Microsoft Word and Excel, and has been to space twice. Photo: Getty Images
Bill Gates hired Simonyi as his 40th employee while Microsoft was a start-up; Simonyi dated Stewart for 15 years, including through her incarceration, then broke up with her to marry someone else
America’s first self-made female billionaire, Martha Stewart, may be a shrewd business mastermind but she hasn’t had much luck in the love department. Her first marriage, to Andrew Stewart, was tumultuous and rife with cheating. After their divorce in 1990, the lifestyle doyenne had a 15-year relationship with fellow billionaire Charles Simonyi that lasted through the five-month prison sentence for her 2004 insider trading case. In her recent Netflix documentary Martha, Stewart revealed that Simonyi only visited her in jail once – though he reportedly sent a private jet to bring her home to Bedford, New York, when she was released.
The romance fizzled out in early 2008, leaving Stewart so bereft that, in her new documentary, she describes the end of the relationship as a “second divorce”. She goes on to say that her life was “less exciting” following her incarceration, which put a strain on her relationship. Stewart then recalls the shocking moment when she realised the relationship was over. Lying in their shared bed, Simonyi told her that he was marrying a woman called Lisa and that her parents wanted him to cut ties with his partner of 15 years. “I thought that was the most horrible thing a person could do,” Stewart affirms.
Just six months after the revelation, Simonyi married Lisa Persdotter, with whom he went on to have two children. But what else do we know about the man Martha Stewart once called a “total genius”?
He wanted to escape Hungary
Charles Simonyi at the IAS Einstein Gala in March 2019, in New York. Photo: Getty Images
Advertisement
Charles Simonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary, into a scholarly family. His father, a physicist, taught engineering, while his mother taught languages. Although he admits to having a happy childhood, his ultimate dream was to “get out of Hungary, go to the West and be free”, per The Seattle Times. Following a brief stint as a programmer in Denmark, Simonyi moved to the US, aged 20, to pursue higher education. He studied engineering, mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained his PhD in computer science from Stanford.
He was one of Microsoft’s first employees
Charles Simonyi is the man behind iconic Microsoft applications Word and Excel. Photo: @_eser2014/Instagram
Simonyi is best known for joining Microsoft when the company was still a start-up. He was hired by Bill Gates as the company’s 40th employee, per Forbes, and led the teams developing the Microsoft Office suite, including Word and Excel, per The New York Times. He climbed the ladder at the company, spending his last 12 years as its chief architect before leaving in 2002. He then started his own company for productivity apps, Intentional Software Corporation, which was later acquired by Microsoft.
He’s been to space … twice
Charles Simonyi during a training session at Star City, outside Moscow, in 2007, ahead of his first trip to the International Space Station. Photo: EPA
Simonyi made headlines as the second ever Hungarian to travel to space, when he visited the International Space Station as a space tourist in 2007. Two years later, in 2009, he made history again by becoming the first space tourist to go to space twice. The billionaire funded both trips himself, paying a total of US$60 million.
