Not a superyacht party or a gala Washington dinner, but the strongest link between Jeff Bezos and his helicopter-flying wife is the dusty desert city of Albuquerque where a teenage mother once parked the future centibillionaire’s bassinet beside her school desk.

Albuquerque has always figured prominently in Jeff Bezos’s story. With Amazon’s visionary founder recently tying the knot, public fascination now extends to his private life and his new bride, Lauren Sanchez, once known as the helicopter-flying fiancée. While Mrs. Bezos shares an Albuquerque birthplace with her husband, the city’s influence on the tech titan runs even deeper.

The Duke City was actually important as it was the birthplace of the world’s third-richest man, worth $226 billion, and where many key life events took place. It is no secret that Bezos was born in 1964 at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque to 17-year-old high-school student Jacklyn Gise and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Ted Jorgensen. At the time, Jorgensen was a circus performer working with Ringling Brothers, one of the largest circus companies in the United States. However, he abandoned baby Jeff and his teenage mother.

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Meanwhile, Jacklyn finished high school while caring for her infant, often carrying Jeff to evening classes and parking his bassinet beside the desk. Jeff was 17 months old when Jacklyn filed for divorce and moved in with her parents. But Albuquerque had more in store for the mom-and-son duo. Cuban-born Miguel Ángel Bezos, who arrived in the United States in 1962 at age 16, earned a scholarship to the University of Albuquerque, where he met Jeff Bezos’s mother. She married immigrant Mike Bezos, who adopted four-year-old Jeff. After Mike received an engineering degree from UNM, the trio left for Houston, closing Jeff’s Albuquerque chapter before kindergarten.

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Several years later, Albuquerque became significant again as the birthplace of his now-wife, Lauren Sanchez. She wasn’t just born in Albuquerque; she also grew up there and has career foundations in the city. Her father, Ray Sanchez, was a flight instructor and mechanic, and her mother, Eleanor Sanchez, was a city council clerk in Albuquerque. Sanchez recently visited the city to celebrate the release of her children’s book, “The Fly Who Flew to Space,” and shared photos of her visit on social media.It would be poetic if the power couple returned to the place that unknowingly connects them in more ways than they could have imagined.