The Second Coming of Steve Jobs - Alan Deutschman [54]
Tina had worked for years in the computer industry but she was developing her own life and identity outside of it, working to help the mentally ill. She was one of the founders and board members of Open Mind, a nonprofit organization that put together resources about mental health. She became a close friend of Gary Bricklin, an intelligent young writer who was confined to a wheelchair because of a nervous-system disorder. Steve bought Gary an expensive new van that was specially equipped for his wheelchair. Tina herself wouldn’t accept Steve’s gifts, but her friend benefited from his generosity.
Steve’s business partner Ross Perot strongly urged him to marry Tina. (Not long before, Ross had balked at doing business with Sun’s Scott McNealy because the younger man was a California bachelor.)
Steve was thirty-four, and had been in a relationship with Tina on and off for four years. He hinted to his colleagues that he might propose to her. In June 1989, Steve talked with Heidi Roizen, who told him about her fiancé David, a dashingly handsome surgeon.
“Maybe the next time I see you, we’ll both be married,” Steve said.
His remark turned out to be only half true. He asked Tina to marry him, and she said no.
When friends asked her why, she said that Steve drove her crazy.
• • •
IN THE FALL OF 1989, Steve was invited by a bunch of students at Stanford Graduate School of Business to come speak to their class. One of the organizers was a first-year MBA candidate, Laurene Powell. She had an impressive background: she came from a well-off family and had worked in Manhattan for two years as a trainee at Goldman Sachs, the prestigious investment banking firm. In the spring, when she received her acceptance letter from Stanford, she immediately quit her job and went to Florence, where she studied art history for six months. She flew to northern California just in time for the start of her MBA classes. As she settled back into student life, she confided to her new roommate that she had come to Stanford to meet and marry “a Silicon Valley millionaire like Steve Jobs.” During her first semester, she was instrumental in inviting Steve to speak on campus.
The main auditorium at the business school was nearly packed as Steve delivered his standard speech. He talked about Next and where he thought technology was heading. Then, midway through his presentation, he seemed oddly distracted. Laurene was standing at the back left. As she moved into the darkened windowless room, she was dramatically backlit by the intense midday California sunlight streaming in through the open door. The lighting had a halo effect, radiantly framing her magnificent long golden hair.
Laurene made her way toward the stage. She sat right in front of Steve and began looking at him flirtatiously. She was stunningly attractive: in her twenties, an athlete and dancer, alluringly curvaceous but with the long slender legs and lean waist of a model.
As she looked at him, Steve was visibly flustered.
He lost his flow of ideas again and again.
One of his Next colleagues, watching in the audience, was shocked by Steve’s faltering performance. He had seen Steve give dozens of speeches over the years, and Steve was a master of the art. Never before had Steve lost his train of thought like this.
When the appearance was over, Steve canceled his business meetings for the day, claiming that he wasn’t feeling well. Then he went out with the mysterious woman.
• • •
LAURENE POWELL was an astonishingly close match for what Steve wanted in a woman. Like Tina, she was a great natural beauty, exuding a sense of health and naturalness, though people who met them both almost always said that Laurene was even more beautiful. Laurene was a vegetarian. She had eaten “whole foods” and shunned meat since her teens, for health reasons, following the advice of her doctor. She had the kind of brand-name pedigrees that Steve admired: Goldman Sachs