Melinda French Gates is opening up for the first time since her divorce from Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.
French Gates sat down for an interview with CBS Mornings' Gayle King, which will air fully on Thursday morning. In a preview of the interview, French Gates described what led up to her high-profile divorce, including revelations that Gates had had an affair in 2000.
"I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that," French Gates said. "It wasn't one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn't healthy and I couldn't trust what we had."
She described feeling angry in the aftermath of their marriage ending and said that she was "grieving a loss of something ... you thought you had for your lifetime."
"I had a lot of tears for many days, days where I'm literally on the floor ... thinking, 'How can this be? How can I get up? How am I going to move forward?" she said.
French Gates and Gates announced in May 2021 they were divorcing after 27 years of marriage. In the wake of their divorce becoming public, it was revealed that French Gates had been seeking a divorce since 2019 after Gates' ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light. Reports also described Gates as pursuing sexual affairs with female employees during his tenure as Microsoft CEO.
Their divorce became finalized last August, after which French Gates joined the ranks of the world's wealthiest women. Her net worth currently hovers around $11 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.
French Gates' full interview with King will air Thursday morning on CBS.
