Melinda French Gates is embarking on her first romance since her high-profile divorce from ex-husband Bill Gates.
The philanthropist has been dating Jon Du Pre, a former correspondent for Fox News and now works as a communications specialist, for the last few months, TMZ reported.
It’s unclear how long the pair have been seeing each other, but Du Pre and French Gates, 58, were photographed together at Nets and Celtics game as far back as April.
The outlet also reported that the pair, in addition to some members of their families, stayed at Pelican Hill — the 5-star hotel in Newport Beach, Calif.
The “Prodigal Father” author, 63, shares three children with his ex-wife, Gina: sons Kasey and Jonny, who graduated from BYU, and daughter Jessie, who graduated from University of Utah.
While much of their reported relationship is under wraps, a source also revealed that the two spent time with family members at Newport Beach’s Pelican Hill hotel. The news of Melinda’s reported new boyfriend comes a year after she and her ex-husband Bill Gates, 67, announced that they’d be divorcing after 27 years together. Find out more about Jon here!
While he hasn’t been a reporter for a few years now, Jon has a strong background in journalism. One of his first anchor-ing jobs was back in 1995, when he worked for KPNX in Arizona. His career took him to a number of local stations in a variety of states, including Utah, California, and more. One of his most well-known jobs though was working as a correspondent for Fox News from 1998 to 2002, per his LinkedIn. Even though his last anchor job was with ABC 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2015, Jon has clearly kept news in his sights, as he also is the president and CEO of his own company Du Pre Media, LLC.
While much of his work has been as a TV anchor and in broadcasting, Jon also notably wrote a book, The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, And Reconciliation In An American Family. The memoir follows Jon and his “search for his once successful father among the nation’s homeless and describes the process by which he came to forgive the man who abandoned his family twenty years earlier,” per the book’s description. The book was a bestseller on Amazon for about two months and was even optioned for a movie from Disney, according to his ABC 4 bio.
Along with pics of him in the gym and training for triathlons, Du Pre shares proud family photos with his three adult children, sons Kasey and Jonny and daughter Jessie.
He previously wrote a memoir, “The Prodigal Father,” about his dark quest to find his own dad, an FBI agent-turned-civil rights lawyer who had been a “hero” in his eyes, Publishing weekly noted.
“The author effectively traces his dysfunctional family history through uncomfortable afternoons in strangers’ living rooms while his father visited with one of his mistresses in the bedroom” as well as “his father’s drunken rages,” the summary says.
Reps for French Gates didn’t immediately return requests for comment. Du Pre still lists himself as “single” on social media.
Last month, French Gates admitted her divorce had been “unbelievably painful,” blaming unspecified “reasons” that she “just couldn’t stay in that marriage anymore.”
