Billionaire Romance, Oracle Style
Larry Ellison doesn’t just dominate databases — he dominates the art of marrying (and remarrying) with a kind of reckless, jet-set abandon usually reserved for rock stars and soap opera characters. While Elon Musk tweets and Jeff Bezos blasts into orbit, Ellison seems perfectly content collecting ex-wives the way one might collect Impressionist paintings or private Hawaiian islands.
But here’s the kicker: ask three different outlets how many times Ellison has actually been married, and you’ll likely get three different answers. Four times? Five? More? Even the press can’t quite keep up with Oracle’s kingpin and his ever-revolving roster of Mrs. Ellisons.
The First Mrs. Ellison: A Marriage Before the Billions
Long before Oracle’s IPO made him a household name, Ellison’s first marriage was the kind of classic American starter union — full of hope, probably short on yachts. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, and Larry wasn’t yet the man who could outbid Hollywood A-listers for Malibu beachfront. That first marriage fizzled quickly, barely lasting long enough to be footnoted in business biographies.
If this were a Netflix limited series, Season 1 would be labeled “Before the Billions.”
Enter the Glamour Years
By the 1980s and ’90s, Ellison was on his way to becoming one of the richest men alive — and his marriages reflected the lifestyle upgrade. Weddings weren’t just personal milestones; they were cultural events. Ellison was suddenly mingling with celebrities, politicians, and Silicon Valley royalty. His second and third marriages played out like society-page spectacles: designer gowns, sprawling estates, and receptions where a Hollywood power agent could bump into a software engineer still in a hoodie.
And like any good soap opera, divorces soon followed. Ellison never lingered too long in a marital storyline. The ink on one divorce decree was barely dry before the next Mrs. Ellison debuted.
The Fourth Time’s the (Maybe) Charm
Most reports put the official count at four marriages. His last wife, romance novelist Melanie Craft, married Ellison in 2003. The wedding was peak Ellison: they tied the knot at his Woodside estate, and none other than Steve Jobs — yes, that Steve Jobs — was the wedding photographer. Imagine flipping through your wedding album only to have half the shots taken by the man who gave the world the iPhone.
It was surreal, it was glamorous, it was very Larry.
But even that fairy tale unraveled. By 2010, Ellison and Craft divorced, leaving behind what remains his longest, most high-profile marriage.
So why can’t the media agree on the exact count? Partly because Ellison’s early marriages were quiet, pre-fame affairs that didn’t leave much paper trail outside divorce records. And partly because Ellison himself seems happy to let his love life exist in a haze of opulent ambiguity.
While Musk brags about Mars and Bezos flaunts his cowboy-hat space trips, Ellison is the enigmatic billionaire who lets tabloids squint at his ex-wives list like it’s a Magic Eye puzzle. Four? Five? More?
It’s the kind of confusion usually reserved for rock stars or soap opera villains — not a buttoned-up tech mogul. But then again, Ellison has always been Silicon Valley’s answer to Richard Burton: rich, rakish, and perpetually altar-bound.
Life After the “I Dos”
What’s Ellison up to now? He’s traded in public romances for his empire of toys:
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The Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he bought nearly in full.
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Yachts that dwarf Mediterranean hotels.
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Malibu mansions, including homes that once belonged to Hollywood icons.
If the ex-wives are the seasons of Ellison’s personal life, the post-marriage years are the bonus episodes. He’s no longer trying to charm society with lavish nuptials — he’s too busy living like a Bond villain with better Wi-Fi.
Billionaires, Brides, and the Culture of Excess
Ellison’s marital history isn’t just tabloid fodder. It says something about billionaire culture itself. In Hollywood, stars reinvent themselves through marriages and divorces — see Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, or Tom Cruise. In Silicon Valley, billionaires reinvent themselves through companies, but Ellison is the rare mogul who merges both worlds.
He’s Hollywood in his love life, Silicon Valley in his empire. He throws weddings that feel like premieres, and divorces that play like finale cliffhangers. And unlike most moguls, Ellison seems strangely unbothered by how the public perceives it all.
Maybe that’s why the media still can’t keep count: Ellison doesn’t care enough to confirm, and the public loves him more for it.
The Final Word (For Now)
So, how many times has Larry Ellison been married? The safe answer is four. But the better answer is: enough to make gossip columnists throw up their hands and admit defeat.
For a man worth nearly $150 billion, maybe the number isn’t the point. The point is that each marriage was another act in the grand Larry Ellison drama — a saga of yachts, software, Steve Jobs taking wedding photos, and society never quite catching up.
And in true Hollywood fashion, there’s always the possibility of one more sequel. Because if there’s anything Larry Ellison has taught us, it’s that billionaires love a good reboot.