In January 2004, Larry Ellison, a billionaire even more eccentric than Steve Jobs sealed his courtship with romance novelist Melanie Craft by marrying her during the winter. The flamboyant co-founder and CEO of Oracle tied the knot with his live-in girlfriend of eight years at a private ceremony at the Silicon Valley bigwig’s 23-acre Japanese-style compound in Woodside. The beautiful and intimate ceremony was conducted beside a waterfall by close friend Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo.
Another close friend of the couple attended to essential duties like taking the wedding photos. Ellison’s best friend, Apple computer co-founder Steve Jobs, did the double duty as the wedding photographer and gifted his friend a lifetime of fond memories (unfortunately, the two divorced in 2010). Jobs attended the nuptials with his wife, Laurene. At the time, Ellison was the world’s sixth-richest man, with a net worth of $16.6 billion.
The incredible wedding venue-
The 23-acre estate in Woodside, California, owned by the nation’s most avid trophy-home buyer, is modeled on a 16th-century Japanese imperial palace. A home in sunny California emulating a palatial Eastern castle couldn’t be accomplished for less than $200 million. After nine painstaking years, the Woodside home was completed in 2004, just in time for the newlyweds to exchange vows and revel in their marital home.
Their home, aka wedding venue, boasted an 8,000-square-foot main house with a boat dock and two guest cottages which would’ve indeed been occupied by the two best friends in attendance on D-day.
A friendship that lasted decades-
If death hadn’t interfered, Larry Ellison’s friendship with Steve Jobs could be his longest-running relationship. The Oracle founder and late Apple CEO were friends for 25 years before Jobs’ death in 2011. Ellison and Jobs were neighbors in Woodside, California. Ellison was the first person Jobs sought to join Apple’s board of directors after resuming control of Apple in the 1990s. So close were the two tech tycoons that Jobs’ kids jokingly called Larry “our rich friend.”
