Bill Gates didn't just drive innovation—he drove the morning carpool, too.
Years before divorce headlines and billion-dollar settlements, Bill and Melinda Gates were navigating life as two working parents with a preschooler and a toddler. And while the world knew him as Microsoft's famously intense CEO, at home, he was quietly doing something far less expected: weekday kindergarten drop-off.
In a 2019 interview with Business Insider, Melinda Gates reflected on that chapter of their marriage. Their daughter Jennifer—now an accomplished equestrian and mother herself—was just starting school, and the couple had picked a campus that wasn't exactly around the corner.
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"It was a good drive away from our house," Melinda said. "And I was making the argument that there were going to be so many years of driving. Maybe we just wait and put her in that school when she was a little bit older."
But Bill wasn't having it.
"He was really quite adamant that he thought we should start then," she recalled. "And he said, ‘I'll drive them.' And I said, ‘You'll drive?'"
Yes—that Bill Gates. The one running one of the most powerful companies in the world. He committed to the commute, even though it meant a long loop back past home to make it to Microsoft headquarters.
And other parents noticed.
"A few weeks into the school year, some other moms sidled up to me and they said, ‘Hey, do you see what's changing in the classroom?'" Melinda said. "I'm seeing more dads dropping off kids," she replied. The moms nodded.
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"They're like, ‘Yeah, we went home and we told our husbands, If Bill Gates, who's the CEO of Microsoft right now, can drive his kid to school, so can you!'"
What started as a small family negotiation ended up shifting expectations—one Volvo at a time.
Melinda said she hadn't realized their household choices were quietly modeling a more equitable version of parenting. But they were. "By trying to create more balance in household chores," she noted, "we realized we were impacting other marriages."
That balance, she explained, was essential.
Melinda has spoken frequently about the toll of "unpaid" labor—things like doing dishes, packing lunches, or remembering dentist appointments—that often fall to women. "We still do family dishes," she added. "Last night was just Bill and me for dinner, and we did the dishes together."
At the time, they were still united in parenting their three children and navigating what Melinda described as a shared, values-driven home—despite having what she once called a "very middle-class upbringing" herself. The Gates children, meanwhile, were raised largely outside the spotlight, though Bill has quietly gifted them multimillion-dollar homes over the years—including buying up an entire block for Jennifer in Southern California.
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It was only in May 2021 that Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce, ending a 27-year marriage. The split reportedly came without a prenuptial agreement, though settlement terms remain private. What's clear is that, even amid extraordinary wealth, they once faced the same tug-of-war over routines, school schedules, and shared responsibility that many couples do.
And through it all, those morning drives paid off—not just for Melinda, who got a few mornings back, but for Bill, too.
"Bill and the kids cherished those moments in the car," she said. "Listening to music together, the conversations over many years that they had — it's a side of him that they might not have seen otherwise. It would've been a missed opportunity."
Turns out, the CEO of Microsoft didn't just shape the tech world—he helped shape a new kind of fatherhood. All before the first bell rang.
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