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- Media personality Lauren Sánchez has been publically dating billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos since 2019.
- She spoke in her first solo interview with the Wall Street Journal since news broke of their relationship.
- Sánchez discussed how she ended up becoming a pilot.
In her first solo interview since her relationship with Amazon founder and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos was made public, former journalist and media personality Lauren Sánchez discussed her path to becoming a pilot with The Wall Street Journal.
Tabloids like Page Six and The National Enquirer outed Sánchez, 53, and Bezos, 59, as a couple in January 2019, just hours after Bezos announced a split with his then-wife MacKenzie Scott. Sánchez was also married to her former spouse, Patrick Whitesell, the executive chairman at William Morris Endeavor, at the time.
The Journal talked to her exclusively for the first time since the scandal.
Sánchez is known for having appeared as a guest host on “The View,” co-hosting Fox 11’s “Good Day LA” show, and anchoring “Extra,” the entertainment TV program. Additionally, she’s starred in movie roles as an anchor in “Fight Club” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” according to IMDB.
But at 18 years old, she had dreams of being a flight attendant, prompting her to move from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Los Angeles, California, in pursuit of the career path, she told The Journal. Sánchez’s career move fell short when she narrowly failed a weigh-in for the role at Southwest Airlines in 1989, she added.
“Back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds,” Sánchez said. “They said, ‘You need to be 115.'” But she said if she were that age again, she’d know: “I don’t want to be a stewardess. I want to be the pilot!”
Both of her parents were pilots, and 22 years after being told she weighed too much to be a flight attendant, Sánchez attended a flight school in LA to get her pilot’s license in 2011.
Jeff Bezos (left) and Lauren Sanchez (right).
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Now, she’s a licensed helicopter pilot.
“This is one of the only places I feel entirely in control,” Sánchez told the outlet.
Sánchez says she tries to get in the sky at least three times a week, sometimes flying with Bezos and their blended family to various locations around the globe.
“I don’t know why more women don’t do it,” she told The Journal. She added that when women find out about her piloting, “They’re like, ‘What? You’re such a badass!’ And I want to say it’s really not that hard. I do want more women to get involved in it.”
Sánchez is planning to release a children’s book titled “Flynn, The Fly Who Flew” later this year inspired by one of her helicopter rides, according to the Journal.
“I was in the helicopter, and there was a fly,” she told the outlet. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, look, a fly who flew! This is such a great children’s book. And it stuck.’ Except now it’s a rocket [in the book].”
“I hope that a reader, especially children, will see that if you wander and explore, you never know what you’ll discover. You shouldn’t stay in one place. Don’t be typical,” she continued.
Sánchez doesn’t just fly helicopters, she is the founder of Black Ops Aviation, an ariel filming company, and the vice chair of Bezos Earth Fund, an organization committed to fighting climate change.
She is also set to lead Blue Origin’s female-led mission to space in 2024. “It’s going to be women who are making a difference in the world and who are impactful and have a message to send,'” Sánchez told The Journal.
