Former wife of billionaire Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, has shared the reason behind their 2021 divorce.

In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday, April 14, 2025, Melinda explained that a lack of honesty in the marriage affected their emotional closeness. This, she said, led to her decision to end the relationship.

Melinda while being candid about the end of her 27-year marriage with the Microsoft founder said: “But I learned to have a trusted relationship which is what I wanted in marriage, both partners have to be honest with one another and if you can’t, you can’t have intimacy and you can’t have trust and so in the end, I had to go.”

Melinda French Gates, now 60, is back in the spotlight as she promotes her new memoir, The Next Day, where she reflects on her life, including her high-profile divorce from Bill Gates in 2021.

Although she didn’t go into detail about what led to the breakdown of trust in their marriage, she has previously said that Bill Gates' connection to Jeffrey Epstein played a role in her decision to leave.

During her appearance on The Late Show, Melinda also shared that she is currently in a relationship and is now engaged.

“I am dating now and I’m engaged. It’s been pretty great,” she said.

Melinda is engaged to tech investor Philip Vaughn.

Speaking about his reason for writing about her marriage in the book, Melinda said: “Yeah, I thought it will be first of all disingenuous if I didn’t write about the transition out of my marriage because people knew it had happened to me and it happened to unfortunately a lot of families.”